40 Days For Life Campaign Continues

From September 22 to October 31, pro-life supporters representing 40 Days for Life gathered outside Planned Parenthood on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. There, they held a nonstop prayer vigil, with the goal of peacefully educating communities as well as making reparation for those who work within the facility. 

40 Days for Life operates across the globe in 64 countries, with many participants also fasting for an end to abortion, knocking on doors in neighborhoods, and reaching out to religious leaders to raise awareness about the campaign.  

The organization went national in 2007 and has since saved the lives of almost 20,000 babies with the help of over one million volunteers. Additionally, 40 Days for Life reports that 222 abortion workers have quit as a result of their vigils and 114 abortion centers have closed.  

In 2009, the Coalition for Life, a maternity clinic which offers support and alternatives to abortion, moved next door to a Planned Parenthood in Bryan/College Station, Texas. Abby Johnson, the former clinic director at the Planned Parenthood, joined the 40 Days for Life movement after speaking with participants in a vigil outside her clinic and having a change of heart on the issue. 

“I am in this movement today, because of ordinary people who took on an extraordinary task,” Johnson said.   

Following her decision to join the pro-life movement, Abby wrote the national bestselling book Unplanned in 2010.

This 40 Days for Life Campaign started with perceptible momentum after the implementation of the Texas Heartbeat Act on September 1st. Annette, a vigil volunteer, described “a young woman and her grandmother [who] stopped to talk to one of the sidewalk counselors in front of Planned Parenthood in South Dallas … After a few minutes of conversation, all three agreed that she should keep her baby!”

Fr. Peter Joyce of St. Mary of the Assumption in Milford led the Spanish Vigil on Saturday, October 9, outside the Boston Planned Parenthood. 

“Many question the value of the annual practice of Lent,” Fr. Joyce said. “They argue that our devotion and penances should be anonymous and hidden. Yet, every year the Church invites the whole world to do the same thing at the same time. Why? Because there is true power in doing it together … 40 Days for Life is reminiscent of Lent. It’s about doing penance through prayer and sacrifice for the attitude of our modern age that chooses death over life time and again.”

“One thread or stick can easily be broken; but many woven together are stronger than their individual strength. As it is with fibers woven into rope or scraps of wood nailed together for greater strength, being part of these 40 days is about knowing a power larger and stronger than any of us alone as well as all of our individual strengths combined,” Fr. Joyce continued.

The Fall 2021 40 Days for Life Boston Campaign also hosted Friday night candlelight vigils where the Stations of the Cross and Divine Mercy Chaplet were prayed, Saturday morning Spanish vigils where the same prayers were said together in Spanish, Sunday family vigils, among other events.

Featured image courtesy of 40 Days For Life