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In 1967, a Democrat in the Colorado House of Representatives, lawyer Dick Lamm, who later propounded that seniors “have a duty to die,” succeeded in passing the nation’s first liberalized abortion law, six years before the Roe v. Wade decision that struck down all state laws restricting the deadly procedure.
But now, 47 years later, churches in 18 communities in Colorado and across the nation on Oct. 5 will observe National Life Chain Sunday, an event in which pastors will lead their congregations onto sidewalks for a 90-minute session of prayer and repentance.
National Life Chain Director Royce Dunn says seeking God’s help is the only way America ever will rid itself of the ongoing holocaust of abortion.
“At this point in my pro-life experience, it is not easy to believe an end to the killing will occur without divine intervention,” he told WND in an interview Wednesday.
The Life Chain observances in Colorado – in Colorado Springs, Delta, Estes Park, Florence, Grand Junction, Greeley, Littleton, Englewood, Longmont, Loveland, Montrose, Monument, Parker, Pueblo, Rye, Colorado City, Trinidad and Westcliffe – are among the estimated 1,500 or more taking place nationwide.
The messages are specific: “Jesus forgives and heals,” “Adoption: The loving option,” “Lord, forgive us and our nation,” “Pray to end abortion” and “Life – The first inalienable right.”
Organizers say “chatter, frivolity, and both verbal and physical responses to motorists” are discouraged, and the 90 minutes on local sidewalks should focus on “prayerful self-analysis, repentance, and serious commitment to helping end abortion in our nation.”
“Life Chain is not chiefly a demonstration, and its witness is not intended for the viewing public only,” organizers said. “Instead, its first goal is to minister to its own participants – to those who call Christ their Lord and hold pro-life messages that declare abortion a grave evil that defames the name and holiness of God (Leviticus 18:21). Indeed the church that Christ founded has drifted into cold indifference toward the sacredness of human life.”
A newly released book, “Abortion Free,” by Operation Rescue executives Cheryl Sullenger and Troy Newman, also offers suggestions for those who want to do something in their own communities about the $2 billion a year abortion industry in the United States.
The authors recount many of their own experiences battling abortion, including their successes in shutting down clinics.
Dunn told WND the Christian church in America also needs to step up.
“The church across our nation … [needs to] discover the holocaust of some 57 million reported surgical abortions,” he said.
Describing himself as a “conservative Protestant,” Dunn said “something is amiss” when churches consider contraception a non-issue and often ignore or even advocate for abortionists.
He said there’s a “grave disconnect which helps to account for the nature of holocaust.”
“We realize that holocausts are crafted and sustained by powerful spiritual forces, if we believe the Bible,” he said. “The Bible tells us in Ephesians 6, ‘We battle not against flesh and blood, we battle against powers and principalities in high places.'”
He said the evil in Germany’s holocaust was evident because it was personified in Hitler.
“Spiritual forces operated the same way to legalize abortion in America,” he said, “although they operated in a way that was not so easy to observe. We did not have a Hitler in America.”
He said the church’s weakness and its acceptance of contraception “greatly influenced the legalization of abortion.
He noted that in the Supreme Court’s reaffirmation of abortion in 1992, it said contraception and abortion are “of the same mentality.”
Churches can register to participate in National Life Chain Sunday on the organization’s website, which includes information about where events are being held.
National Life Chain calls itself an ecumenical prayer ministry that is linked to Sunday morning worship.
“As expressed by R. Arthur Matthews in ‘Born for Battle,’ ‘without God man cannot’
and ‘without man God will not,'” the ministry explains.
The first Life Chain in 1987 drew 2,000 participants, and by 1991, there were 272 chains with 771,000 participants.
The impact often cannot be quantified.
A lady testified that 10 years ago, she was driving by a Life Chain observance in Savannah, Ga., and decided not to have an abortion. She pointed to her daughter and said, “This is who I would have aborted.”
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Order your copy of “Abortion Free,” by Operation Rescue executives Cheryl Sullenger and Troy Newman.
