Why I keep coming back

This February while I was in Florida for the Abortion Awareness Project, somebody asked me, Why do you keep coming back? It’s true – I’ve done several projects with CCBR, and I have been working with CCBR since the Fall. Why do I keep coming back?

When I first started with CCBR, I did not want to be here. My friend had told me I should come to the Pro-Life Week of Action, and my internal response was: “That’s a nice idea, but… no thanks.” I really wasn’t interested, but she convinced me to go. That week, I saw a video of an abortion, and my heart broke. After that, my life was changed.

I went home after that week and told my friends: “Unless you are the one who watched that baby be pulled apart, you don’t know how bad it is.” I could tell there was a major disconnect — they didn’t understand, just like I hadn’t. They didn’t care, because they hadn’t seen the reality of abortion like I had. I went back to join CCBR for a few weeks of activism and when I got home, I would say to people: “You guys! You really don’t know how bad it is, unless you’re the one talking to that girl who was crying on the street.” And then, I went to do another project, and we went to offer help to women at an abortion clinic.

I was standing there, feeling so helpless. I never really knew how bad it was, until I watched girls go into that clinic with babies alive and kicking inside them — and come back out without them. Car after car pulled into the driveway, one hurting woman after another, all with innocent little children about to die… We really don’t know how bad it is until we’ve seen it.

This February, I was at the abortion clinic again. As I was sitting there, I kept thinking over, and over, and over again: Why can’t we be faster?! We all care. We’re all here. We’re all trying to do something about it. We have a good strategy! We’re doing something — so why can’t we be any faster?

As I sat on that sidewalk in a puddle of tears trying to find an answer, I realized: we’re not faster because we don’t have enough people. We need more people to fight for these children – that’s how to be faster. The more people we have, the more minds we change, and as a result, more lives are saved.

And then I realized: if I leave, we are one person slower. Maybe, right now, we can’t be faster than we are, and so we just need to keep fighting. But if I’m not here – if you’re not here – we are slower. The lives that have been saved, the minds that have been changed — that only happens if you and I are there. If you and I don’t keep coming back, we will be slower.

That’s why I keep coming back.