Monday, February 16, 2009

How we can help a culture of life to grow

Q: Besides getting out on the streets with the pictures of abortions, do you have any other ideas of how, from the grassroots level, we can engage the culture in a similar way?
A: We can get our op-eds in the paper and we can tell about what we do and hope it gets on somewhere. We can make videos - we have a bunch of videos that we send around and groups get together and watch Face the Truth and No Greater Joy, How to Sidewalk Counsel and things like that. We can make news here and there. We now have the abortionists coming out and protesting us. ...I would say show up when Obama appears to give a talk - protest, have signs, and let people know that this isn't a great Messiah that everyone thinks he is, this is a guy who supports abortion, and be present. A little tough love goes a long way. Sure, we want to convert everybody. We try to do it, but we also have to let people know what is going on in this country. … We have lots and lots of pro-life groups and there are lots of blogs and things, but we are not going to have much chance, at least in the federal government, in the Congress or the Senate. Fight - always fight - against anything that they introduce that is pro-abortion and don't give that up, but don't make that your whole end, that is to get laws passed.
Abortion laws have never been that strong. It was when they started setting up homes for these girls and helping them to keep from having abortions or to help them when they are pregnant, carry them through the pregnancy. Those things are very, very important, that you show an interest in the people involved and help them. But also, the women who have had abortions, have compassion for them, so that they can tell others, not to get involved in that.
There is a lot of work to do in that. We plan to do just about double of everything that we are doing. Our publications, our videos, our street-work, side-walk counseling, we give seminars on how to counsel at the clinic and we usually get 30 or 40 people who come and they become pretty good sidewalk counselors. There is a crisis pregnancy center and they have had 37,000 saves since they opened up. Women who actually came in and got help and decided to have their babies. You go all over the country and you have 3000 crisis pregnancy centers. They are doing a lot of work - a lot of good work.
I think God writes straight with crooked lines. I think maybe we almost need to have a crisis like this with Democratic, pro-abortion people in power. We are going to have to fight a lot harder and realize that this is a battle of conversion of the conscience of the country, and you can't just do it through law.
see full interview with Joe Scheidler here: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021202.html