Sidewalk counselors show love to mothers and babies
Bob Rust, left, and Margie Schmitz pray the rosary on Jan. 7 outside a Planned Parenthood abortion center in Indianapolis. The sidewalk counselors offer information and help to mothers considering abortion. Rust is a member of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Enochsburg. Schmitz is a member of St. Luke the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)
By Sean Gallagher
Hundreds of pro-life supporters from central and southern Indiana travel to Washington this weekend to join tens of thousands of other people for the 38th annual March for Life on Jan. 24.
While they are standing up for life and peacefully protesting the culture of death, other people committed to proclaiming the Gospel of Life will remain in Indiana on the front lines of the pro-life cause.
They are the sidewalk counselors who faithfully stand outside abortion facilities to offer love, hope and help to mothers experiencing a crisis pregnancy. (Related story: Gabriel Project to open crisis pregnancy center in Indianapolis)
Bob Rust, a 79-year-old member of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Enochsburg, has been dedicated to this life-saving ministry for 20 years in extreme heat and cold.
He knows that many people in the broader culture see him and other sidewalk counselors as harassing the people who go into the abortion centers.
But that doesn’t distract him from the real purpose that keeps him committed to this challenging ministry.
“We’re out there to show love, to show love for the woman and the child,” Rust said. “That’s what we’re there for.”
They share facts about fetal development and encourage women to consider pro-life alternatives, including help offered by such ministries as the Great Lakes Gabriel Project and and the archdiocese’s Birthline.
Margie Schmitz thought for a long time that sidewalk counselors were actually hurting the pro-life movement which she started volunteering for in 1974.
“I felt that they would give us a bad name,” said Schmitz, a member of St. Luke the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis. “I just didn’t like it. I don’t know. I thought maybe they were harassing the girls.”
Although she volunteered in many ways for decades in pro-life efforts in Indianapolis, Schmitz didn’t want to go near an abortion facility.
“Once in a great while, I’d go and pray a rosary [in front of an abortion facility],” she said, “but I got out of there as quickly as I could.”
She even thanked God for not calling her to minister there.
Then 40 Days for Life started in Indianapolis in the fall of 2007. Schmitz participated in the
40-day-long prayer vigil outside the Planned Parenthood abortion center near her home, and felt that God was calling her to do what she had fought against so hard in the past.
So after “arguing” with God about it for about four months, Schmitz started praying regularly outside the facility on Good Friday in 2008. But she was still too afraid to try to speak with the women going into the building.
Then a sidewalk counselor there asked her to simply hand out pro-life pamphlets to people arriving in cars.
“Right away, someone pulled up, and it was a mother and her daughter. I said, ‘OK, God, you’ve got to give me the words. I don’t know what to say,’ ” Schmitz recalled. “And the Holy Spirit really did [help me]. I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. They just stared at me and listened. Then they drove around and came out.”
The next time that Schmitz did sidewalk counseling, she helped a couple choose life for their baby.
She has been a faithful sidewalk counselor ever since.
One of her fellow counselors went into an abortion center 29 years ago as a young mother. But she didn’t chose life for her unborn baby.
Elizabeth Kane, a member of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Carmel, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese, has ministered as a sidewalk counselor at abortion centers in Indianapolis for seven years.
“My baby was a martyr through that terrible sin, [but] God has turned it into something amazing,” she said. “I could never have imagined what he’s done with me, where he’s brought me spiritually.”
She has helped bring many mothers make the choice for life that she didn’t make. And God has blessed her with the chance to see some of the babies that she helped to save.
“I got to be there when one was born,” Kane said. “I got to hold him before his mommy held him. He’s 3 now.”
For the past seven years, Kane, Rust, Schmitz and other sidewalk counselors are invited to participate in a Gift of Life Mass that is celebrated on the first Sunday of the year at St. Maria Goretti Church in Westfield, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese. During the Mass, the counselors and other pro-life supporters carry to the altar white roses representing each of the babies saved from abortion during the previous year at abortion centers in Indianapolis.
The rose that Kane carried this year represented a baby she had helped save on New Year’s Eve. She had counseled a woman at her apartment and persuaded her to choose life. The woman then invited her to go to church with her that night.
“I spent New Year’s Eve in her church with the last baby saved in 2010,” Kane said.
For Kane and other pro-life sidewalk counselors, it’s this kind of dedication that expresses their love for mothers experiencing crisis pregnancies and their babies.
“We’re Jesus’ hands and feet,” Kane said. “We feel that that’s where he would be if he were on this Earth because his precious children are being destroyed, and the mothers and fathers are being ruined. We’re there to bring Christ’s love, and to offer help and hope.” †
