THE TIME I SAT NEXT TO AN ABORTIONIST...

By Brendan O'Morchoe
Students for Life of America

When you are working or volunteering in the pro-life movement day in and day out, you can easily get consumed by the big picture and lose sight of what is happening every day in our nation’s abortion mills. As we worry about money, politics, and time away from family, we can get too immune to the killing. 

But then you sit next to a late term abortionist…

Last Saturday, I was boarding a flight coming home to Virginia from Omaha, Nebraska. I had been in Kearney, last weekend speaking to students and local pro-life activists about how to create a Culture of Life in their community and how we are all called to the pro-life movement. Oddly enough, a lot of people asked me that weekend how I kept up my busy travel schedule and where I get my passion and energy. It is the moments like what happened on my flight Saturday night, confronted by evil, that keep me going.

When I sat down and looked across the aisle, I saw none other than notorious late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart on his way to kill 3rd trimester babies, as his does every Sunday morning, at his Germantown, MD facility. I was face-to-face with a man who has killed thousands upon thousands of babies with his own hands, who is responsible for the deaths of at least two women and who has so callously defended his business. 

And I had no idea what to do.

What do you really say to someone like that? How can you reach them?

I wasn’t sitting close enough to have a conversation as the aisle and his wife were between us. Plus, I felt he would shut me down right away, anyway. I knew I couldn’t sit that close to a man who represented so much evil. My entire body was shaking uncontrollably.

So, I asked to be moved up a couple rows where I couldn’t see him, but he could still hear me. Then for the next 2 hours, I prayed out loud for his conversion and an end to abortion. When we landed, I waited for him to walk past me, and I called his name. He looked me right in the eye, and I said, “LeRoy, we’re all praying for you.” He mumbled something incomprehensible and stalked off, but I knew I had gotten to him.

I’m not the first pro-lifer to confront Carhart and, hopefully, I won’t be the last. Just as with any dialogue or conversation with an abortion-rights supporter on a campus, in church, or at work, each of us is only responsible for planting or watering the seed of truth, hoping and praying that it will one day bear fruit. 

And while we might not always know the impact that our actions have on campuses and communities across the nation, we cannot forget what abortion really is, the lives and souls that are at stake every day across America.

Sitting next to LeRoy Carhart reminded me of one thing for sure…we cannot let fear, intimidation, or our busy lives stop us from action. We cannot rest until abortion is abolished from our nation.

I hope today you can renew your support of Students for Life as we transform our nation by empowering and equipping young people to be courageous leaders for Life.