During the first weeks of December, we organized Christmas caroling events outside a Planned Parenthood facility on its surgical abortion days. A couple dozen of us sang on one side of the driveway while sidewalk counselors stood on the other side of the driveway, calling out to the parents as they arrived and offering them information.
We hope that the songs about the infant Jesus touch the mothers’ hearts and help them change their minds, but we also sing for the babies we are unable to save. We sing for them on their last day, honoring the value of their brief lives and offering them the only act of love they will ever receive on this earth.
We had been singing for about an hour one morning when a woman came walking out of Planned Parenthood. She was crying. I hurried to get information to give to her before she got too far down the street. When I turned to see where she had gone, I saw that she had walked across the street, straight to the local pregnancy center’s ultrasound bus!
What joy over that one baby being spared! Some carolers began to cry, too.
Word spread about what had happened, with the carolers telling their friends and family. A few days later, a priest in Belize told the story in his Sunday sermon.
Thousands of miles away from where that mom first met her baby via ultrasound, people who hadn’t even known she existed rejoiced that her baby’s life had been spared.
We work toward the day when every baby is welcomed with that same wonder and joy.
Merry Christmas!