Simon Cox Blog: Waiting Outside an Abortion Clinic Years Ago Was Worth It

Monday 4 December 2017

Waiting Outside an Abortion Clinic Years Ago Was Worth It

The mother of an almost-aborted baby reached out with this letter about her son.

So much of life is spent waiting.

The mother waits months to hold the babe nestling in her womb. The parent devotes years of love and discipline in hopes of helping the child bloom. The Christian shares the gospel, trusting God to bring forth fruit in future days or months or years. And the farmer anxiously watches sun and rain for weeks to see if seeds will sprout. “Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle,” we read in Ecclesiastes, “for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.”

We know, of course, even as we wait, that many of the returns on our investments—whether of time, money, teaching, love, or labor—will never be seen in our lifetimes.

The place where God taught me the most about waiting was the abortion clinic.

For ten years, once a week, every week, I waited outside the abortion clinics in the city where I was then living, offering help to the women and men going in and coming out. At most of the clinics, it was nearly impossible to initiate a conversation because the sidewalks were often far from the clinic entrances. But sometimes patients would walk by or even go out of their way to talk to me—sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes out of anger, but most often out of desperation.

Most of the hours I spent outside the abortion clinic are now a blur of defeat and despair: an obscenity hurled by a passerby here; a confrontation with an angry boyfriend there; an occasional clash with volunteer escorts, clinic workers, or abortionists; freezing snow; sweltering heat; pouring rain.

However, punctuating all this failure every once in a while, a woman would change her mind—quietly, tearfully, ...