THE GLOBE
PO BOX 5079 (51102)
1825 JACKSON ST.
SIOUX CITY, IA (51105)
712.255.2550
800.352.9035
WWW.CATHOLICGLOBE.ORG

40 Days for Life to hold midway rally this Sunday

By KARA KOCZUR, Globe staff reporter
(Email Kara)

The 40 Days for Life halfway point has already arrived. Twenty days down, 20 more to go.

To celebrate reaching halfway, a midway rally will be held at 2 p.m., March 15, at the Marian Center at Trinity Heights. There will be refreshments, pro-life resources, young adult speakers on the reason they’re pro-life and a post-abortive woman’s testimony.

“This lady has gone through a lot,” said Mary Stevens, DCCW campaign director for Sioux City. “She had a couple abortions and almost had a third one.”

The woman speaking is Corinne Ruskey and she wants to help other women who are struggling with the consequences of having an abortion.

“I know how [abortions] can mess your life up,” Ruskey said in an e-mail to Stevens. “I know the feelings before, during and after. It took me 20 years to forgive myself for the atrocity that I committed.”

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy will also be sung by Kevin Keane and Claudia Hardey. Pro-life rosaries and 40 Days for Life t-shirts will be for sale.

Although the vigil has reached its halfway point, Stevens urges people to not give up their prayer and fasting.

She is especially thankful for the prayers of nursing home residents and the homebound.

“We are excited that they’re joining us in their prayers because it’s so powerful, and for them to be offering up their pains and their discomforts is really great,” she said.

Given northwest Iowa’s winter weather, Stevens said she finds the amount of people praying in the cold, sometimes for hours, remarkable. She has been especially struck by the number of men who drive from out of town and stay for hours at Planned Parenthood, praying for an end to abortion.

“It amazes me how many men are outspokenly opposed to abortion,” Stevens said. “They feel the pain, as well as the women.”

There have already been stories from the frontlines of the spiritual battle being waged in front of the abortion clinic. On the first Saturday of the vigil, a young woman joined a group of people praying in front of the clinic.

When they were finished, she told them that she had had an abortion back in 2000, and after counseling, she was finally regaining self-respect.

One day, Stormy Poss, vigil sign up coordinator, just stopped by the vigil site to check on things when she witnessed a moving sight. Approximately eight foster children were standing in front of Planned Parenthood, praying the rosary.

“They had driven an hour to come and pray, it was about 10 degrees out, and they were facing Planned Parenthood,” she said.

The children had just learned the rosary the week before, and couldn’t wait for their turn to pray, she added. It was an amazing thing to witness.

“I know they would have just come from homes where there was loneliness and desolation so they know what that’s all about,” Poss said. “And for them to just stand there and be so happy with these little smiles on their faces, praying for the babies and the mothers, it was great.”

Poss also received a phone call from a woman who had heard about 40 Days for Life on the radio. The woman’s mother was 16 when she conceived her, and despite relatives’ efforts to persuade her to have an abortion, the woman’s mother resisted. Years later the woman married, had a child of her own and then found out she had leukemia.

“So she went to Omaha to get all the blood tests and they said, ‘Okay, all of the blood tests came out great except you’re pregnant and so you just need to come in this other room we’re going to go ahead and get an abortion done,’” Poss said.

However, the woman refused to have an abortion, even though the doctor’s said it would cost her life. They also told her that if her child was carried to term, the baby wouldn’t be normal.

“'Nine months later,’ she said, ‘I delivered a 10-pound healthy baby boy and I am cancer free,’” Poss recalled.
The woman now plans to pray as part of 40 Days for Life, and may be the speaker at the closing rally, Poss said.

Although the vigil is half over, people are still urged to sign up for hours by calling Stormy Poss (712) 943-5550 or by signing up online at www. vigilcalendar.com/siouxcity.