(Thanks, Mark K., from WWU, for sending us the above photo.)
In honor of my mom (Happy Birthday!) and my dad, who gave me life, baptism, and taught me to defend and respect all human life.
It's what we do:
Praying, protesting, verbalizing for an end to abortion.
Our city is in the middle of a 40Days4Life campaign, and we've taken to the streets
along with a group of local prayer warriors.
We pray and protest outside the local abortion facility, hoping to change hearts and turn minds toward respecting all life from natural conception to natural death.
It's not easy.
There are many who hurl insults, many who mock us, some who use obscene gestures.
Our children, holding signs which read, "Pray for an End to Abortion,"
are screamed at by women who hang out of their car window yelling, "I love abortions!"
So sad. We pray for them.
They truly 'know not what they do,' Lord.
Despite the attacks and the insults, we continue to take our place on the sidewalk to be
the voice and the defenders for the unborn.
It's what we do. It's what we have to do.
No, I don't force my children to participate in anti-abortion efforts, they are there of their own free will.
Our children know abortion is wrong.
It's written on their hearts.
They need no convincing~ and they willingly step up to take their place in the defense of life efforts.
We understand that converting those who support abortion is beyond our ability, really.
We rely on God's grace to change those who are open to His message of love and willing to examine the truth about abortion rather than accepting the lies offered by our culture of convenience.
Hopefully we can be messengers of His grace, and plant His seeds of truth.
God sent a very special messenger to convert one hardened abortionist in Serbia.
St. Thomas Aquinas delivered God's truth to Stojan Adasevic, who not only repented but became a national pro-life leader:
Stojan Adasevic is a Serbian doctor who has performed, over a period of twenty-six years, an estimated 48,000 abortions, sometimes as many as thirty-five in a single day. According to Adasevic's written testimony, he "dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear." At this point in the dream, a man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. This dream was repeated night after night, and caused Adasvic to wake up each night in a cold sweat. One night, he asked this strange man dressed in what Catholics would recognize as a Dominican habit, to identify himself. "My name is Thomas Aquinas," came the cryptic response. Naturally, since Adasevic's entire education was in communist schools, he had never heard of him. Moreover, the medical textbooks of the Communist regime maintained that abortion is merely the removal of a "blob of tissue". Although ultrasound images of the fetus arrived in the 80s, they had not changed Adasevic's mind about the reality of the unborn.
Then it was Thomas's turn to ask a question of his own: "Why don't you ask me who these children are?" Aquinas quickly answered his own query: "They are the ones you killed with your abortions." Adasevic awoke in amazement and vowed not to perform any more abortions.
When Adasevic informed his hospital that he would no longer do abortions, reprisals came swiftly and were quite severe. The hospital cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her post, and took steps to prevent his son from entering the university.
After years of pressure and frustration that brought him to the brink of despair, he had another dream in which St. Thomas appeared to him. "You are my good friend, keep going," said the Angelic Doctor. And, indeed, Adasevic has kept going. In addition to studying the works of Aquinas and returning to the Orthodox faith of his childhood, he has become Serbia's most important and effective pro-life leader. Among his accomplishments is getting Dr. Bernard Nathanson's film, "The Silent Scream," aired on Yugoslav television.
by DONALD DEMARCO
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