40 Days For Life Begins Today

Special Report - February 17, 2010
Thousands of pro-life citizens across the United States, Canada, Australia and Northern Ireland will join together for 40 days of prayer and fasting, constant vigil outside abortion clinics, and community outreach during the 2010 spring “40 Days for Life” campaign that begins today. The first of two campaigns planned for 2010 kicks off on February 17 and will run through March 28. It will be observed by pro-lifers in a total of 165 cities, including Raleigh, Charlotte and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The mission of the campaign is “to bring together the body of Christ in a spirit of unity during a focused 40-day campaign of prayer, fasting, and peaceful activism, with the purpose of repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion in America.” During the 40-day timeframe, participants are asked to: 1) pray and fast for an end to abortion, 2) keep constant, peaceful vigil outside abortion clinics in their communities for 24 hours, seven days a week (with individuals or groups rotating time slots), and 3) educate their communities about the harms of abortion through community outreach, including church involvement.

According to David Bereit, national campaign director for 40 Days for Life, since the first national campaign was held in 2007, it has helped to save at least 2,168 unborn children from abortion, encouraged 28 abortion clinic workers to leave the abortion industry, and contributed to the closing of five abortion centers. Bereit, who led the first ever 40 Days for Life campaign in Texas, was recently a guest on the North Carolina Family Policy Council’s weekly radio program, “Family Policy Matters.” On that program, he discussed the important part that one North Carolina city played in the decision to organize a national 40 Days for Life campaign. “Charlotte has actually been a very strategic location for us in the past because one of the first early campaigns—before we even began organizing these nationally—was conducted in Charlotte,” Bereit explained. “And in fact, at the completion of that campaign, a post-abortive Catholic woman and post-abortive evangelical woman called us to let us know the success they had, and that was when we really felt compelled to begin this as a nationally coordinated effort. So if it wasn’t for North Carolina, this wouldn’t even be happening as a national effort.”

Bereit also offered encouragement for citizens to get involved with the 40 Days for Life campaign in their communities. “Think about that mother in your community right now who just found out she was pregnant, and she’s scared and her family is telling her to have an abortion, and the boyfriend is either out of the picture or trying to pressure her to have an abortion,” he said. “Think about that mother and what can we do as the body of Christ to help her. And if we think about it that way, we can act, and we can do things to save one life at a time, [and] to change one heart and one life at a time.”

See www.40daysforlife.com for more information.

To listen to the Family Policy Matters radio program featuring David Bereit, go here.

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