40 Days for Life has reported 680 unborn lives saved during its Lenten campaign, 22 February to 2 April.
40 Days for Life organised peaceful, prayerful vigils outside abortion facilities around the world to help mothers and ultimately save unborn lives. Its work is centred around a “40-day, non-stop, round-the-clock prayer vigil outside a single Planned Parenthood center or other abortion facility”.
During its Lenten campaign, 40 Days for Life reports that 680 unborn babies were saved.
In total, 23,528 unborn lives have been saved through such prayer campaigns since 40 Days for Life began its work in 2007. 250 abortion workers have also left the industry due to the organisation’s prayerful initiatives.
However, Lourdes Varela, a director of 40 Days for Life, noted the increasing pressures that pro-lifers are facing, including buffer zones in the UK that threaten their work. “The great challenge is that our faith will be put to the test in the face of looming persecution”, she said.
“What we can see with this legislation is that they fear us because they have to move an entire political system and create laws so that we don’t go out to pray. They’re afraid of a few people who, for every hour, for every time slot, go to pray outside these abortion centres.”
“This is about freedom”
On 7 March, MPs voted 299 to 116 to ban even silent prayer outside abortion facilities in England and Wales following a “buffer zones” amendment to the Public Order Bill.
Some MPs spoke out against the amendment and in favour of free speech, including Sir John Hayes, who said: “This is about freedom: it is not about the purpose of that freedom or the location of it. It is about the ability to think, speak and pray freely.”
Eddie Hughes MP (Walsall North) (Con) also decried the intolerance of the measure. “If we continue down this line”, he said, “we are going to extrapolate on an extrapolation in order to make absolutely sure that anybody can be arrested for anything.”
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 45, the UK director of March for Life, has been arrested twice for silently praying outside an abortion facility with a buffer zone.
The first arrest took place on 6 December 2022 in Birmingham, England. Ms Vaughan-Spruce has since been acquitted following her first arrest. The outcome of her second arrest has yet to be determined.
A similar buffer zone bill is being considered in Scotland.
SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “680 unborn lives saved is a big achievement that shows the powerful and real-world effect of pro-life witness, which pro-abortion ideologues are determined to shut down.
“While pro-lifers want to save lives, the abortion industry and its shameless apologists seek more and more abortion, robbing vulnerable mothers of alternatives to abortion. This is why pro-abortion politicians are moving fast to persecute those who give women a true choice.
“This is why we must continue to resist the rising oppression, which, if left unchecked, will only increase and lead to more censorship and more unborn deaths. It is not only unborn lives that are a stake here, but also our hard-won civil liberties. This is about offering women true choice and having the right to advocate it.
“Pro-abortion idealogues will ultimately stop at nothing to pursue their violent ideology. We must respond peacefully but resolutely, constantly forwarding our case while living the loving values we stand for.”