Project Rachel

After viewing this video on YouTube this morning, I felt compelled to share Project Rachel's contact information.

Project Rachel is a Catholic ministry for post-abortive women.  You don't have to be Catholic to use the service.  Project Rachel is confidential.  Whether or not a woman feels it at the time, abortion is a highly traumatic event.  Even if she never has a conversion experience that convinces her that abortion is an intrinsic evil, no woman can truly be at peace with making the decision to abort her child.  In this day and age, it is just not possible to convince yourself that you have done anything less than to kill your baby.  Call it what you want, pretty it up any way you have to.  A baby's heart starts beating 18 days after conception, before most women (especially those not trying to conceive) even know they are pregnant.  You don't have to have a degree in biology to know that beating heart = life.

At that point, then, it becomes an issue of ownership.  It's in my body, therefore, I can do what I want with it.  Even so, many women don't make that decision lightly.  And the aftermath hurts.  For teenage girls who may feel pressure from boyfriends or parents, growing up may be the biggest trigger or Post Abortion Stress.  Getting married, getting pregnant for the second time, experiencing what pregnancy can and should be like can raise all kinds of feelings that have been subsumed for years.  Project Rachel can help.

What many pro-abortionists don't seem to understand is that pro-lifers don't care only about the lives of babies (although, of course, as society's most vulnerable, those without a voice take precedence): we care about women! We care about women far more than Planned Parenthood does.  Planned Parenthood wants your money (or our tax money).  Then they want to poison your body with birth control pills and send you on your merry way never to see you again (until they can get more money out of you).  We want you to live a blessed and healthy life.  We want you to respect your body for the beautiful creation it is.  We want you to be HAPPY (how can anything Planned Parenthood rips out of you or puts in you make you happy?) - not just for five minutes of sex, but for a lifetime.

Sometimes this conversation feels like spitting in the wind.  I recently heard (can't give credit because I don't remember, but it was on Catholic Answers Live) that our society has gotten so instant gratification-oriented that the sins have to even more sinful to satisfy.  Planned Parenthood has never been richer and never been happier.  I know that no one who reads this is the person who actually needs to hear it.  The people who need to hear it have their ears (and eyes) firmly closed.  I know that prayer effects miracles.  Abby Johnson (and countless others) is proof of that.  I guess the instant gratification society has infected me as well.  It's just that in the time that I've been writing this, according to their own statistics, Planned Parenthood performed nine abortions.  The need is crucial.  The need is now.  Please pray to end abortion. Pray for the women and the children.