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INTERFAITH PRO-LIFE SERVICE
Speaker tells story of move from pro-choice to pro-life position

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
(Email Katie)

Pointing to her husband, Leslee Unruh, a keynote speaker at the 16th annual Siouxland Interfaith Prayer Memorial, said she wasn’t pro-life until she met him.

“I was that feminist who thought it was a right,” said Leslee. “I would debate the pro-life people. I debated the South Dakota Right to Life. When Allen and I married, I was still very bitter.”

Now that she is part of the pro-life movement as the founder of the Sioux Falls’ Alpha Center and the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, she said she sometimes receives threats for what she does on a daily basis and people ask her how she handles it.

“I think God prepared me when I was a little girl,” said Leslee. “When I was 9 years old, I came home from school and I found my mom lying in a pool of blood in the bath tub. My alcoholic father had beaten her, once again.”

She said her life didn’t get any easier from there.

“Only you, God, could take a little girl of a home like that, a woman who’s killed her own child and have her stand up here and say when I am weak, he is strong,” said Leslee. “The only reason I stand up here is because I have been very weak and he has been very strong.”

Life - a gift from God
During the service on Jan. 17, Bishop R. Walker Nickless led the opening prayer.

“Heavenly Father, creator and giver of all life, author of justice, source of love and mercy, although it is deserving of your anger and punishment, look with mercy on our nation which has offended you by condoning the killing of millions of innocent children,” prayed the bishop.

Close to 700 people gathered for the prayer service at Cornerstone World Outreach in Sioux City.

“We come together as an interfaith service. We come together throughout Siouxland. We come together all across this country on a day that we remember as something very solemn and very sacred – God’s gift of life to us,” said Dr. Don Cork, the master of ceremonies from Central Baptist Church in Sioux City. “We see a lot of people who share a common belief that life is a gift from God.”

Doesn’t get any easier
During the keynote address, Leslee recalled stories about working at the Alpha Center and the “tough days.”

“In all the years of doing this, since 1984, it has not gotten easier,” said Leslee. “I am sure that the Alpha Center here would tell you the same thing.”

In 1984 Leslee founded the Alpha Center, a pregnancy-support agency, and the Omega Maternity Home. This led to the opening of 14 similar centers throughout the United States. The Alpha Center also maintains the “Fleet for Little Feet,” a mobile pregnancy center that travels across South Dakota, providing care.

“We didn’t come here just to give you a speech, another pro-life talk,” said Leslee, whose husband Dr. Allen Unruh was about to take the stage and talk as well. “I want to be here because God is calling you to partner with Fleet for Little Feet, the Alpha Center and all the others to save unborn children in this city.”

Leslee introduced her husband Allen, a chiropractic physician in Sioux Falls and the father of their five children and grandfather to their 11 grandchildren.

“I have an optimistic message for you because we have truth on our side,” said Allen. “One man in truth is an army and one man in God is a majority.”

He said there have been almost 50 million aborted babies since 1973. If they were put on a Vietnam memorial, he noted, it would have to be 60 miles long.

“That is how much destruction we have had,” said Allen. “Abortion is the ultimate issue. How many issues are important to you if you are dead? Not too many.”

He told a story about a father and daughter who walked through the Holocaust museum. They were silent for two and a half hours. At the end of their tour, those who went through the museum could sign in the register. The daughter signed her name and wrote the comment, “Why didn’t somebody do something?”

Allen said the burning issue of this time in history is abortion.

“We need to become activists. I challenge each of you to contribute to the cause,” he said. “We can all do something to make a difference. We have just begun to fight.”

37 roses, 37 years
The service included the presentation of 37 red roses, one for each year abortion has been legal. Thirty-seven people, young adults to babies, present the individual roses, starting with a 37-year-old.

Larry Walsh, a board member at Queen of Peace, Inc., read reflections as each person brought their rose to the front.

“Life is a precious gift from God,” Walsh read. “From the moment of conception until natural death, our lives belong to him.”

He read the following passage from Pope John Paul II, “A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope.”

Fourth degree Knights of Columbus, Garrigan Assembly, presented an honor guard at the service, and youth from interfaith churches led the final song, “God Bless America.”

Following the coffee social after the service, the roses were taken to Trinity Heights and placed at the Tomb of the Unborn. Deacon Mark Wyant of Sacred Heart Parish in Sioux City led the prayer inside the Marian Center at Trinity Heights.

The prayer memorial is a collaboration of the Alpha Center, Queen of Peace, Inc., and Siouxland Right to Life.