Debbie Picarello set up a table for Deeper Still, a post-abortion counseling ministry, at Virginia Tech. She is able to reach many people who will not walk over to the GAP display itself.

She was a student at Virginia Tech.  She was 23, post-abortive, divorced, and has a toddler and a new boyfriend.  She joined the protest against GAP.  She has lived hard and experienced a lot.

She came from a Christian background and was pro-life until she aborted her first child and walked away from the faith.  She does not regret her abortion and is thankful she had it.  She wouldn’t look at the pictures while we talked.

After 45 minutes she finally said “Ok, I now get what you are saying about a woman’s autonomous body and the baby’s autonomous body.  They don’t share the same DNA and the baby is not a part of her body.  I am really struggling now.”  We gave her some literature about prenatal development.  She thanked us and said, “I am now interested in reading about this.”

Here is the question that keeps us awake at night …

What if her pro-life pastor had understood/cared enough about her salvation and her baby to show her the truth about abortion?

Why didn’t he show her an abortion video (e.g., Choice Blues) before she shed innocent blood and ran away from Jesus.

Awesome piece by Rolley Haggard at BreakPoint.  Excerpts:

Moral/spiritual matters are preeminently the domain of the church.  Political overtones notwithstanding, abortion is arguably the moral/spiritual issue of our day.  If we don’t speak to it, who will?
***
As heaven’s ambassadors, therefore, it is not only appropriate but obligatory that ministers address abortion.  Whatever political overtones may attach to preaching against the sin of abortion, silence is not an option for the church—unless the plan is just to quit preaching against sin altogether.  (emphasis added)
***
In answer to this we might well ask, “seekers of what?”  Seekers of a pleasant but shallow church experience, or seekers of the living Christ?  Seekers of a mere “form of godliness,” or seekers of “religion that is pure and undefiled”?

Entire article here.  Show it to your pastor.

One thing we wish Mr. Haggard had added to his piece, and that is the need for showing abortion photos or videos (e.g., Choice Blues) to people in the church.  Christians deserve to know the truth about abortion — what it is, what it does, and what God expects us to do about it.  Most Christians who have never seen abortion don’t understand how evil it really is.  Nor do they understand their own responsibility to “hold back those staggering toward slaughter (Proverbs 24:11-12).”

Before visiting your pastor, you should read this: Why This? Why Here?.  This brochure is designed to answer many questions that Christians leaders (including, perhaps, your pro-life pastor) are confused about.  You might also watch a video of how abortion imagery can be appropriately incorporated into a worship service at a large mega-church (with children removed, warning of content given, etc.).

Update: 27 May 2014, 4:45 pm

Got this comment from Roland Haggard:

Thanks, Fletcher, I totally agree we need to show abortion pix to folks in church, but you’re right I didn’t manage to fit it into the above article. I did, however, include it in these two:

• If the Ear Won’t Listen, Tell it to the Eye:  The Case for Proliferating Graphic Pictures of Abortion
• Picking Up the Gauntlet:  Challenging believers to be pro-life not only in belief, but in action:   (even mentioned CBR in this one)

Blessings, my friend

Even Christians have abortions because they have never seen abortion.  How can they see it if nobody shows it to them?  If pro-life churches would simply show the truth, babies could be saved that are now being lost.

Only rarely do we get permission to show abortion video in a pro-life church.  Even pro-life pastors are reluctant to accept the angst that goes along with making people uncomfortable about abortion.  Even when we do get to show the video, we often have to fight for the priviledge.  When we suggest babies lives are at stake, we are called “strident,” “pushy” etc.

But we are often reminded later why we fought so hard.  We just got word this week of another baby saved because we showed abortion video during a worship service.  As reported earlier link here), CBR’s Executive Director Gregg Cunningham was able to show abortion video on a November Sunday morning at Calvary Chapel Pearl Harbor.

We just learned that at least one baby has already been saved as a result.  The mother was not only pregnant that Sunday, she had actually scheduled an abortion for the following day.  This mother had heard sermons against abortion, but had never actually seen abortion.  Gregg had debated the pastor and his wife at some length to persuade them to allow him to show our “Choice Blues” video to the congregation.  To their great credit, they finally withdrew their opposition.

When confronted with the truth, the mother became angry and stormed out of the service – but the pictures haunted her.  She cancelled her abortion appointment and sought the church’s help instead.  Had this pastor rejected Gregg’s pleas to show abortion video, this baby girl, just born, could easily have become another faceless, nameless statistic.

Please don’t withhold truth at your church.  Here is how we showed truth at Calvary Chapel Pearl Harbor:

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Got a note from Lynn Dyer, a sidewalk and crisis pregnancy counselor who explains how she uses CBR’s Choice Blues video to save children and moms from abortion in Arizona.  She wrote:

I’ve been involved in pro-life activities for the past 30 years. I”m always interested in finding new ways to touch a woman’s heart so that she will not abort her baby.

When counseling a woman and/or young girl and she agrees to go to our clinic (Life Choices Woman’s Clinic) with me, she will be given an ultrasound so that she can see her baby. After that, she is shown the DVD Choice Blues. In many instances, seeing this DVD has solidified her decision not to abort.

To give an example: I brought a young girl into our clinic recently whom I had counseled on the sidewalk at the abortion clinic. She had had a previous abortion and was to get a second one on this particular day. She reluctantly agreed to come to our clinic with me, but was still abortion minded. She saw her baby on the ultrasound and afterward made the comment to me, “Well, the aborted babies go back to heaven, right?”  [Note from FAB:  We hear the same thing from “pro-life” Christian pastors who try to justify doing nothing to stop abortion, even within their own churches.]

I know then that she had not had a change of heart yet. Then I sat with her while we watched Choice Blues. This is when I saw the real transformation in this young girl. She explained to me that with her first abortion, she had been heavily sedated and they (Planned Parenthood) had not told her or showed her what would actually take place during her abortion.

She was shocked at what she saw on this video and asked numerous questions about possible physical injuries and complications that might occur as a result of this obviously dangerous and brutal procedure. I truly feel that this girl did not go through with her plans to abort her baby because of what she saw on this DVD.

[In Arizona, there is a 24-hour waiting period, which means that 2 visits to the abortion clinic are required. The sidewalk] is a perfect opportunity for me to give her the Choice Blues DVD to take home with her to watch before she comes back on the second visit to abort. So far, I have never seen a woman whom I have given the DVD to return for her abortion. Choice Blues is an invaluable tool for me in my counseling … a real lifesaver.

Thank you CBR for making this valuable DVD available.

Order your own copies of Choice Blues to hand out. There is a special version of Choice Blues for use in crisis pregnancy counseling that is not suitable for general audiences. For the crisis pregnancy version, click here.  We have letters from CPC counselors who have documented literally hundreds of babies saved by CBR videos.  Those are just the ones who bothered to write.

For the standard version of Choice Blues, suitable for use with general audiences (normally teenagers and older), click here.