40 Days for Life effort concludes with big-time testimony
Michele Ryan
By Tom Maguire
Associate editor
The sidewalk prayer warrior recounted a precious hour.
Michele Ryan, of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Syracuse, prayed outside Planned Parenthood for 29 days in the 40 Days for Life Syracuse Campaign. For 10 years she has shown up. She stands seemingly motionless, holding her rosary. “I usually get to talk to at least one every time I’m here,” she said.
During the campaign’s closing ceremony Nov. 5 on East Genesee Street, Ryan told attendees (more than 20 showed up) that on Day 2, she encountered a despondent 19-year-old woman who had become pregnant with her first boyfriend and had taken the abortion pill she had bought over the internet for $150. She showed up to see if the abortion had been complete “and they canceled her appointment,” Ryan said.
“I had an hour to talk to her,” she said. “I’ve never been given an entire hour to talk to somebody here.”
“She takes the pill, then takes the second pill,” Ryan related. “And she said, ‘There are not words to describe the pain, the agony, mental and physical, of what I went through.’ … Over and over she said to me, ‘If only someone had warned me. If only someone had told me. If only someone had helped me.’ She said, ‘I know I’m only 19. I’m still living at home. But I should have known better.’”
‘I’m so sorry!’
Ryan said the 19-year-old also told her: “‘I’m so sorry!’”
The teen told Ryan she had run away from home a couple of years ago and ended up at a Baptist church that took her in and fed and counseled her and connected her back with her parents. Ryan asked the teen if she could go back to the church. “‘The Lord is waiting to receive you in his arms and love you,’” she advised the teen.
Ryan said she was praying to the Holy Spirit “to give me the courage to say what really needed to be said, and I said, ‘Listen, you’ve told me you’re sorry. You’re telling me you wish you didn’t do this. You’re telling me that you’re eager now that I’ve reminded you, eager to get back into some kind of a relationship with God. Are you willing to say it out loud? Right here, right now on the sidewalk? And she says, ‘Well, what do I say?’”
Ryan told her: “‘Tell Jesus how sorry you are. Ask for his forgiveness. Tell him you want to be in a relationship with him, and speak the words out loud.’ And she did. And she did. She did.”
So this very sad story, Ryan said, had a “happy ending, because she asked the Lord to be part of part of her life! And then she called a friend to pick her up. And off she went.”
Shannon Guy, spokesperson for 40daysforlife.com/Syracuse, told Ryan, “I showed up on the sidewalk when you were talking to her and I knew it was big-time.”
Teens from Tyburn
Another big-time event for Ryan came late in the 40-day campaign. Twenty-three teenagers from Tyburn Academy of Mary Immaculate in Auburn showed up with four chaperones and lined the sidewalk. “And they each took a turn saying a decade of the rosary, and then the Divine Mercy Chaplet,” Ryan said. She told them, “‘You lift my heart, because I met another teenager here, who made a terrible mistake.”
Spokesperson Guy wants to get the word out about the importance of abortion-pill reversal (abortionpillreversal.com). “We do have five children that have been saved” through abortion-pill reversal in Central New York, Guy said. She added, “And one’s in the works right now.”
The first 40 Days for Life campaign took place in 2007, according to 40daysforlife.com; the campaign has reached over 1,000 cities in more than 60 countries. Under the heading “Saving Lives and Ending Abortion,” the website cites 24,161 lives saved, 254 abortion workers having quit and 147 abortion centers having closed, according to a check of the website on Nov. 16. Also cited were 9,207 local campaigns and 501 lives saved from Sept. 27 to Nov. 5.
Over the course of the years, Guy said, more than 80 children have been saved in Syracuse, “and we have pictures,” and some of them are now in high school, “which is a miracle. We had two in the first campaign and those children are now in ninth grade, which is a miracle.”
Two local abortion workers have quit over the course of the years, Guy said. “And one of the workers came out and said to us, ‘We know that you’re praying for us in there and I just want to tell you that I will never come back to this horrible place again,’ and thanked us for praying for her.”
Averting God’s judgment
In addition to praying, 40 Days for Life participant Bill Downer, of Camillus, passes out cards that list where pregnant women can go to get help and counseling, instead of an abortion. His No. 1 reason overall for participating, he said, “is to help avert God’s judgment on our land, because of the shedding of innocent blood brought about by abortion. … And the second reason would be some of the bad things that abortion can lead to later on,” such as euthanasia.
Attendee Father Thomas Ward, administrator of St. Daniel Church in Syracuse, petitioned the Lord: “You yourself chose to enter into this world through the Incarnation being conceived in the womb of Mary, your mother. And so through her intercession and calling upon the intercession of all the saints, and all the angels, we ask that you continue to bless the efforts of 40 Days For Life, that you bless our efforts to bring an end to the evils of abortion.”
Before the singing of “God Bless America” concluded the program, Deacon Lou Pizzuti, OP, of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Syracuse prayed:
“Almighty Father, we thank you that we are privileged to be here to engage in battle against the demons who thrive in this place. We thank you for the victories against them and the victories in the lives of all these young women. And we thank you for your continued blessings, and we pray that you continue them.”
