40 Days for Life Campaign Raises Awareness of Anti-Abortion Effort

A small, grassy strip of land along Sudley Road has been walked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for the past 39 days by people praying, fasting and holding vigil for lives whom they say were ended unjustly.

Anti-abortion activists and members of several churches from all across Northern Virginia have descended on an area near the Amethyst Health Center in Manassas, where abortions are performed. They are waving signs in support of life at vehicles that drive along busy Sudley Road as part of the 40 Day for Life demonstration.

Forty Days for Life is a community-based international campaign that takes a determined, peaceful approach to showing neighbors the consequences of abortion, according to the group’s website.

Many of the demonstrators are from several parishes in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington, which includes All Saints’ Catholic Church in Manassas, the largest in the diocese, said Father John Kelly, of Saint Andrew the Apostle Church in Clifton.

Parishes in the diocese are assigned different days to come out to the site and raise awareness, Kelly said. During the 40 days, which concludes Sunday, members were at the site from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., he said.

“It raises the consciousness of people; it kind of puts it on the radar (and) they will think about it later in the day after they have seen us out here,” Kelly said.  “I think for people who share the same belief, it reaffirms that other people share that belief as well. We like to think it gives people reason to pause.”

More than 23,000 abortions were performed in private clinics in Virginia in 2010, including 1,372 at the Amethyst Health Center for Women in Manassas, according to the Virginia Health Department. A representative of Amethyst deferred comment to the National Abortion Federation in Washington, DC,  but messages to that agency were not returned.

Kelly said he finds the state’s health department's 2010 statistics saddening.

“They kind of break your heart,” he said. “Because I think, especially among young people today, they tend to be more pro-life, so when you hear those kind of statistics that is very, very disturbing. You just think of all the children, and the potential that they had if they had been allowed to live.” 

An anti-abortion activist from a local pregnancy help center, who didn’t want her name or her organization identified because she doesn’t want to adversely affect its mission, said the reported number of abortions in Virginia tell her that more education is needed.

“Most of the women who think they want an abortion have not been given all the information, even though in the Commonwealth the law states they have to be given their risk and options, and there’s a 24-hour waiting period,” she said.  “Unfortunately … these clinics don’t necessarily follow that.”

Those working in abortion clinics and others in favor of abortion often use the example of a victim of rape or incest to support their stand, she said. Abortions are being used as a form of birth control and the majority of abortions are the result of unwanted pregnancies and not because of incest or rape, she said.

“The rape was not her choice—she was violated. But we believe you are violated with an abortion, but in that case, you chose that violation,” she said.

Kelly said, “As a priest, we deal with women who come to you years later racked with grief and remorse, and it kind of affected their whole life in a negative way. They have a sense of shame and guilt and remorse."

As a leader in the church, Kelly sees many married couples that desperately want to have children and are interested in adopting but can’t, he said. “… all of these children who have been aborted, they could have grown up in a loving home with parents who really wanted them. Who knows what positive things they could have done in our country and in the world," Kelly said.

During the 40 Days for Life, members of the movements have drawn support and criticism from drivers along Sudley Road.

“Sometimes they are very positive and sometimes they are very negative …” she said. “The ones who aren’t supportive normally shout something out or put a certain digit out the window.”

She said 3,500 babies are killed every day, but the outrage doesn't match the outrage that comes after other tragic events in our society.

“That’s not her body; that’s a separate human being. And why it’s OK for her to end the life of that separate human being is beyond me. How did we get to that place in this country that we say it's OK. We defend it, it’s defended by laws in this country,” she said.