In Focus:

Help save lives!  Your prayers and presence is needed!


Dear Friend for Life

This week is historic for New Zealand.  For the first time, there will be simultaneous prayer vigils outside abortion facilities in three major cities in New Zealand for a full 40 days!  Not only that, various other cities are holding vigils in solidarity, and thousands more will pray in their homes and in their places of worship to bring about the end of abortion in our land!  Our dream is that all believers will sense the urgency to petition God in all humility, to bring about the end of abortion in New Zealand.

We will join thousands of people throughout the world doing exactly the same thing.  This Lent there will be 273 cities holding an official 40 Days for Life vigil in 23 countries!  That is awesome!

In 2014, there were 13,137 reported abortions performed throughout the country.  This number has been steadily going down for seven consecutive years.  Our worst year was 2003 when 18,511 innocent children lost their lives before they were born through surgical or medical abortion.

But while we have cause to celebrate, we cannot be complacent.  Any life lost through abortion is one too many.  We cannot rest until abortion becomes unthinkable!

We must also be aware that while the reported surgical and medical abortions decline, very early abortions caused by abortifacients:  the Pill, the Morning After Pill, Jadelle and Implanon implants, NuvaRing, Depo Provera, Copper IUDs and the Mirena hormonal IUD are on the rise.  The push by Family Planning and other agencies for women to be fitted with so-called Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives has been underway for a few years now.  IUDs are routinely fitted as a form of emergency contraception, and women who have had abortions are encouraged to have either an IUD or implant inserted.  We will never really know how many lives are lost through these drugs and devices.

There are many ways we can fight against abortion.  All of them are important.  However, the fight is fundamentally spiritual before anything else.  Satan loves nothing more than to see tiny human lives, made in the image and likeness of God, destroyed.  He enjoys watching the aftermath as women and families are broken by abortion.  He revels in the blindness of those who work in abortion facilities.  And he delights in the silence of Christians.

Be strong and courageous!  This Lent your prayers and your presence outside abortion facilities throughout the country is absolutely vital!

Today a woman will discover that she is a mother.  Because of her circumstances she is going to be tempted to have an abortion.  She may feel pressure from the father of the child or her family.  She will think she has no other option.  She will make an appointment to have her child killed.  She will turn up for that appointment - but you will be there.  Your prayers and your presence may save her and her baby's life from abortion - just from being there.  And if not, your presence has been a sign of hope to her.  Your love the only love that her pre-born child will know on this earth.

40 Days for Life is an opportunity to pray, to fast, to repent, to witness to Christ and his great love and mercy.  It is an opportunity to reach out to abortion-minded women and let them know that we do care, that there is another way, that there is HOPE.  It is an opportunity to really love those who work in the abortion facilities and to offer them encouragement to use their skills to promote and preserve life.  It is an opportunity to speak with the public - many of whom have been touched in some way by abortion - about the reality of abortion and the humanity of the preborn child.  It is visiting Calvary.

Please sign up now to pray outside AMAC (Auckland), Wellington Hospital or Christchurch Hospital this week.  If you are in Wellington, please join Cardinal Dew for Mass at St Anne's, or in Auckland, please join Bishop Dunn for Mass at Good Shepherd on Tuesday night.  For those who live elsewhere in New Zealand, find out if there is a vigil taking place in solidarity and join in.  Where ever you are, please pray for an end to abortion and for the success of the vigils.