40 Days for Life is underway. The nonprofit organization behind the effort strives to end abortion through prayer, fasting and peaceful activism at abortion clinics. This year 40 Days for Life celebrates its 10th anniversary.

40 Days for Life Mission

According to the 40 Days for Life website, “The mission of the campaign is to bring together the body of Christ in a spirit of unity during a focused 40 day campaign of prayer, fasting, and peaceful activism, with the purpose of repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion.” Participants commit to fast and peacefully pray at abortion clinics. 

Since it’s inception in 2007, 40 Days for Life has had 4,876 campaigns in 715 cities in 44 countries. Organization president Shawn Carney says over 13,000 lives have been saved and 154 abortion workers have quit their jobs and come to 40 Days for Life. Many of those workers have told Carney that Planned Parenthood’s internal no-show rate for women scheduled for abortions is as high as 75 percent when there’s a prayer group outside. “That’s a statistic that will certainly get us out of bed in the morning.”

Thirty percent of campaign leaders are women who had an abortion but are recruiting prayer warriors for 40 Days for Life.

10th Anniversary Campaign

Carney tells The Stream the 10th anniversary campaign will be bigger than ever. He expects 250,000 people to show up and pray in 375 cities and 25 countries worldwide. 

For the 10th anniversary this year, they’ve added some new tools, like a 40 Days for Life pro-life app with daily prayer devotionals and an apologetics section. Participants can now sign up online through the app to pray at their local 40 Days for Life location.

Also this year, college students who get the app and participate in the 40 Days campaign will qualify for a $4,040 scholarship, which will be awarded in January at the Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco. There’s even an online store where folks can get t-shirts. 

Abortion Rates

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated in their latest report from 2016 that almost 665,000 abortions were performed in 2013 in the U.S. The abortion rate was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years and the abortion ratio was 200 per 1,000 live births. Abortion number, rate and ratio of reported abortions decreased by 5 percent from the prior year.

Carney said the actual number of abortions is much higher. “It usually is between about 800,000 and 1.2 million every single year,” he said. “[But] we have seen a great trend that needs to continue and that is the abortion industry shrinking in size. Planned Parenthood has closed many facilities, we’ve had record closings the last five years. We’ve had about 70 abortion facilities close their doors every year for the last five years, that’s the average.” He said “fantastic pregnancy resource centers” now outnumber abortion providers 5:1. “They’re offering real medical help in a professional environment and it’s just a beautiful thing to see.”

‘There is No Hope Without God’

When people ask Carney if it’s depressing being at a vigil, he says it isn’t. “It’s certainly obviously sad, but it’s depressing without God. And there is no hope without God, for anyone. And so when we take him to the darkest corners of our city in our culture, you know, He will work miracles and we’ve certainly seen that.”

Carney recounted one of the most miraculous stories of a life saved. It involved a woman with no money, a troubled marriage and a handicapped child. The advice of two doctors to abort led the woman to the largest abortion facility in Southern California. But once she arrived, she had second thoughts. She saw the prayer warriors outside. She admitted she didn’t want an abortion. Those praying told her they’d find a doctor to see her.

When the doctor examined the woman, he told her ‘your baby has many gifts.’ She chose life for her unborn child and delivered a beautiful baby girl who was born with no legs and a cleft palate. She named her baby “Milagros,” which means ‘miracle.’

“We had her little baby miracle, beautiful baby girl, on the cover of our summer magazine, our Day 41 magazine. People wrote these great responses seeing this baby girl that the world was trying to throw away because she wasn’t perfect in their mind. And yet, she was perfect in the eyes of God,” said Carney.

His favorite part is the joy the child has brought her mother.

‘It Just Matters’

Those who want to get involved can sign up on 40 Days for Life’s website. Even if they can’t attend, they can pray, said Carney. “We have a lot of people who are homebound or who just can’t go out,” he said. “They can certainly pray. They can donate. We are a nonprofit and we … don’t get tax funding. They can make a donation. We’re privately funded by individual donors. But the most important thing is prayer. If people want to follow along I suggest they get the 40 Days for Life book. It’s 40 chapters … and you can follow the 40 Days for Life campaign through the book.”

“You know, the devil wants to discourage us and say, ‘this doesn’t matter,’ or ‘why should we go out’ and yet we see so many moms turn around at the last minute. We know of 13,305 babies that are alive — that we know of. And many more obviously many more that we don’t know about because of that no-show rate. It just matters.”

“We have the right to assemble, we have the right to free speech,” he added, “and we can go out and you know, not wait for the government to fix the moral crisis that goes on, but go out there in faith and practice our faith in the public square.”

Note: As of noon central on September 28, 4 precious lives have already been saved during this year’s 40 Days for Life.