At the Point of Life or Death

Amy Ritter

Pro-life work has often required that we stand outside in freezing temperatures. The past few years, my husband, Kris, our five kids (now ages 8-18) and I have attended the Chicago March for Life that’s always in January. Why, we wonder, was Roe v. Wade handed down in winter’s coldest month? But I reflect, as my hands and feet flirt with frostbite, that perhaps a touch of hypothermia adds force to the witness that life in the womb matters.

Back in the late last millennium, what my children consider the murky mists of time (that is the 90s), Kris and I were students at Wheaton College and cabinet members of Voice for Life. Propelled by a sense that “all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing,” and convinced abortion is the great moral issue of our time, we regularly prayed outside an abortion clinic in Aurora. Eventually, we launched into sidewalk counseling, using the precious seconds as women walk into a clinic to try to dissuade them from abortion. In this we weren’t practiced, but we were present, and the Lord made the most of that. During our first two weeks outside the clinic, three girls changed their minds…one after I’d only managed to blurt out “there are other options!” She returned to us to find out what the other options were.

One morning we were at our post outside the clinic when a man drove by—his car lurching as he flung curses and his middle finger at us. He pulled to a halt at the intersection and confronted a friend of ours, and began screaming at him, “Are you afraid of death?” Our friend, a Christian and older veteran of this fight, replied, “No, I welcome death.” There was a pregnant pause. Abruptly, the man pulled a gun, aimed it at our friend, and said, “You don’t know how close to death you are.”

Another pause. An ominous click of the gun being cocked. Were we going to see a man die—bloodily born into heaven? We waited, life and death hanging in the balance. Suddenly, the man whipped his gun back, got into his car and screeched off. Although we well knew that abortion is part of a larger spiritual war, there is an exquisite clarity that comes at gunpoint. The danger to souls, like that of this angry man as well as to bodies, only increased our intention to keep fighting.

Kris and I married after junior year, and continued the work in grad school, first in seminary (after ascertaining that “Seminarians for Life” did not mean “Seminarians into Perpetuity”), and in Jus Vitae at Notre Dame. We began the pro-life work of having our own kids. I was pregnant with our oldest, Elena, during my last year of seminary, and eight months along when we went to a National Right to Life banquet at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City (and incidentally, on our way in, were jokingly asked the way to the grand ballroom by Ben Stein in a tux and white sneakers). When bagpipers played during the event, Elena started leaping and twisting about in the womb, despite severe space limitations. She loves bagpipes to this day.

It was very clear to us that children are a blessing. But if war has its moments of clarity, it also has its fog. I recognized a confusion that may arise at life’s turning points…a kind of moral cloudiness in the face of difficult, life-altering events. Did God really say? can be a tempting voice. Some of my friends confessed to me their past abortions. I heard fellow married seminarians whispering how they had just gone through aborting what would have been their firstborn— because “it wasn’t the right time.” And I knew how formidable a pregnancy can seem, even when you are ready and willing. Instead of viewing abortion as a moral contagion “out there,” I began to see how any of us could fall, and how possible and ordinary an evil decision may become.

My grandpa was a botanist in North Carolina, and during one field trip in the Appalachians, he was on a mountainside lecturing his class. He was pacing, as professors do, and took a few steps backward. Instantly he vanished from view as he fell backward off a cliff. Apparently, fog had rolled in until it was even with a cliff edge. He plummeted at least fifteen feet, bashing his head on the way down and scaring his students half to death. Help came with a stretcher, but botanical adventures were rudely truncated that day.

And this is partly what motivates me now: knowing that moral cliff edges lurk near all of us, and not wanting anyone to miss out on the Lord’s adventures. When we’re at the point of choosing life or death, we need the warning, and the restoration if we choose wrongly.

As the Lord said, “I set before you life and death. Choose life, that you may live.” Life and death were starkly contrasted sixteen years ago on the Notre Dame quad, as Kris and I stood at a cross graveyard, a memorial for victims of abortion. It was hushed and deserted, but two-year-old Elena was twirling between the rows of crosses. The sun shone brilliantly on her wavy red hair, highlighting her vibrancy like rays illuminating stained glass. Someone with us quietly remarked, “There’s a photograph waiting to happen.”

There is so much life waiting to happen—spiritual and physical. Pro-life work is really gospel work, at the crossroads of sorrow and joy, sin and mercy, ashes and beauty. So our family does what we can, and we are even coming full circle as Elena has developed her own pro-life convictions and joined Voice for Life at Wheaton College. Above all, we aim to help others at the point of life and death, and join the Lord’s work building his body—from the littlest bodies on up!

Peace in the Womb

Christmas Caroling on Saturday

At Christmas we celebrate hope for the world through the birth of a Jesus. Join the Sanctity of Human Life Task Force in cooperation with Pro-Life Action League as they sing carols of Christmas hope and pray that God will change the hearts of those entering Planned Parenthood in Aurora. Organized carol-singing at abortion facilities can move people who hear the Christmas caroling outside to not go through with abortion. For more information visit college-church.org/sohl. Details will be published as they become available.