That’s the way to do it

This is why the abortion industry doesn’t like 40 days for life or abortion clinic protests. There is evidence that they actually work.

According to this report in the New York Daily News, Sunset Park Abortion clinic has shut down and it’s all the fault of those pesky Catholics praying. The Ambulatory Specialty Surgery Center of Brooklyn on 43rd St., closed earlier this month and will reopen in October as a new medical center providing outpatient surgeries, but not abortion.

It’s interesting that pro-choicers are spinning this closure as being due to the pressure and harassment faced by those conducting clinic vigils and yet it seems odd that no legal action was taken if there was some sort of public order nuisance, threat to security or individuals.

Though we cannot downplay the importance of prayer and reparation here, I think more telling is the statement of Terry Lazar, the clinic owner who states that had the clinic attempted to continue to provide abortions, they would have “gone out of business”. Not language one would expect to hear in the UK, where pro-choicers decry the allegation that BPAS and MSI may be in the game for anything other than purely altruistic motives, whereas here the motives are clear – the abortion clinic existed to make money and provide jobs.

Now that the clinic is closing down its abortion facilities, all of a sudden they are inundated with new staff, twenty doctors have expressed interest in working there, whereas a month ago, they were struggling to recruit employees. I suspect that the decision to change direction has as much to do with economic reasons as it does the vigils, although there can be no doubt that they play a part. The vigils have no right to obstruct the public highways and will not physically be preventing people from getting to work, it’s more likely that their presence has pricked a few consciences, or perhaps that doctors don’t actually want to kill people – strange as that concept might seem!

It seems to be this shortage of doctors that proved the problem, coupled with a lack of customers. The owners can blame the clinic vigils all they like, but its more likely to be a case of simple economics, supply and demand. A rally is planned in support of another abortion clinic in New York, which is also struggling to find doctors and patients.

Even if the vigils are proving something of a deterrent effect, which as the leader of the local chapter for the National Organisation for Women, says is something she’s never previously heard of, then that can be no bad thing. Although is a woman who is so utterly desperate for an abortion, really going to be put off by a group of people displaying their opposition to her choice? Is a woman really going to seek a dangerous and illegal backstreet procedure as opposed to to braving a few allegedly vocal volunteers?

Monsignor Philip Reilly has held a Mass in celebration – I also sincerely hope that there is a Mass said for the souls of the countless babies who have died since this facility was opened.

This is exactly what clinic vigils are all about. Not hassling and harassing women, but praying for the conversions of heart, prayers which seem to be bearing fruit. With no doctors and not enough patients it seems like abortion is becoming a less and less profitable business in the USA. Let’s pray for a similar conversion in the UK. After all, if doctors don’t want to perform abortions and fewer women want to have them, then there seems little point in the clinics continuing to exist.

No wonder the industry is panicking. As one pro-choice activist anxiously tweeted “things are getting serious. Priests are celebrating closures with Mass”. May there be many more.