Landslide For Life? Just the Beginning! -- Albuquerque, New Mexico
/By C.J. Williams, Social Media Coordinator
How can you sum up Hell breaking loose? In about the same way I would sum up the Do You Know? Do You Care? Campaign in Albuquerque.
Just one word: success.
Hell broke loose. Because someone – in fact, dozens of young people, countless ABQ citizens, and volunteers from fellow pro-life organization – came to Albuquerque to reach out with the truth about abortion.
Survivors is an outreach organization. We do our work in the moment, on the street.
And abortion is not out of our reach. You may hear it said that abortion is really safe, legal and rare. The same people, or even people with a heart for life, may say abortion is out of our reach.
Let me repeat: abortion is not out of reach. Albuquerque, New Mexico has proved that beyond doubt.
Survivors youth wrapped up the campaign with a firecracker display of energy and dedication. In three days, they:
· exposed the hypocrisy of NM’s Holocaust and Intolerance Museum, after requesting a panel memorializing the American Holocaust, 56 million dead, and being refused;
exposed the complicity of local hotels, where mothers are sent by Boyd’s clinic to deliver dead babies on the toilet, and “not call 911;”
· picketed Dr. Leeman’s office and home – a doctor who directs a “natural birthing center (Dar a Luz [link]), but also trains his medical students how to abort the very children they might birth;
· leafleted countless neighbourhoods surrounding Boyd’s SouthWestern Women’s Option late-term abortuary;
· counseled women outside PP, and saved at least two babies that they know of – though for every life spared, we know there are at least two more who simply left after seeing our witness;
· reached the mayor, who told Kristina he “wasn’t worried”, and believed the upcoming vote would make abortions illegal past 20 weeks;
· were spat on, threatened, assaulted, by pro-abort women, one of whom threatened assault, driving her car at 3 girls;
Lisa, San Clemente, CA, joins the Public Awareness campaign on her own turf: North Beach Walkway
· made cold calls to thousands of homes, with the facts about abortion, asking: Do you know? Do you care?
· and came back in the evenings to town hall meetings, where they learned from top pro-life leaders in the nation – and then asked to go back out to reach the city in the evening.
“I told you,” Kristina, our Outreach Director texted me, “I thought I’d have to put these kids on a leash before the end of the campaign. But I don’t think I could have held them back with a chain!”
These young people were ready to reach out, to pull open the gates of Hell, to expose the human rights travesty and the hidden holocaust that is abortion in our nation. They did. And they did it so effectively, the city is in an uproar. They did it so effectively, activists in other states took the “Do You Know? Do You Care?” message to their streets (Lisa, seen here, in San Clemente CA). They did it so effectively. . .
. . . the city, the majority of the citizens, thanked them.
"We actually had someone change their mind, even for first trimester," one Survivor reported to me excitedly, "And that’s why we’re here, to change hearts and minds."
Calling one of our leadership campers, I asked for an update. Just as anxious as Jeff to get back to activism, she still paused long enough to respond, “I don’t think anyone had any idea that these abortionists were right around the corner. No idea they’re killing babies right up to birth.”
Bud and Tara Shaver, who started their pro-life activism with a kickstart of education from our Annual ProLife Training Camp 2008, secured 27,000 signatures to get an abortion ban on the October ballot, more than double the number needed, before the official campaign even began, in half the usual time allotted for such a petition drive.
Landslide for life? Just the beginning.
This campaign is everything grassroots. This campaign is a success – because awareness changes things. This campaign makes ABQ not just a proving ground for pro-life activists, but proof that abortion is very much within our reach. Ending abortion starts here, now, with us, with you: grassroots, local, as Jeff White said on Friday: “Speaking truth and then speaking healing.”
In the final town hall meeting at St. Cecilia Parish in ABQ, LLDF Executive Director, Dana Cody, summed it up another way: “The pro-aborts overturned laws in all 50 states with Roe v. Wade. Why should we do any less than the pro-aborts? Why not?"
Why not?
"If you did something today to shorten the abortion Holocaust for one day, 3,300 babies will be saved." - Troy Newman, Operation Rescue
Here we go -- and “not even a chain” can hold us back!
