{"id":302428,"date":"2023-11-29T10:41:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T16:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=302428"},"modified":"2023-11-27T17:03:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T23:03:56","slug":"lifetime-pro-life-started-small-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/lifetime-pro-life-started-small-step\/","title":{"rendered":"A lifetime of pro-life advocacy started with one small step"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was in 1980 when Randy Alcorn opened his home to a vulnerable 17-year-old pregnant woman who had been living with a migrant worker. Alcorn was convicted by a church friend to aid the woman, who had undergone previous abortions. This time, Alcorn was hoping the young woman would choose life. She did, and this sparked in Alcorn a lifetime of pro-life advocacy.<\/p>\n

Alcorn told Live Action News, \u201cI shared the Gospel with her, and she came to faith in the Lord. When her baby was born, she chose to place the child with a Christian couple.\u201d<\/p>\n

And 33 years later, he was present at the reunion between the woman and her grown child.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned she was active in prison ministry,\u201d Alcorn said. \u201cShe redeemed herself for the abortions that clouded her past.\u201d For Alcorn, the experience helped to ignite a passion for pro-life activism, but he could never imagine that his desire to do good would lead to legal troubles.<\/p>\n

Alcorn served as a board member with a Portland-based pregnancy resource center (PRC) and pastored a church. Learning of a nearby abortion facility that committed up to 40 abortions a day, Alcorn and his church members were compelled to act.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were scared at first to get involved because Portland is an \u2018atheistic city\u2019 with the worst possible climate for pro-life activism but knew we couldn\u2019t just stand by and do nothing,” he said. “Babies were being murdered every day. Since the inception of this country, civil disobedience has always been employed to protest the violation of basic human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oregon pro-lifers stood on the sidewalk in front of the busy Lovejoy Surgicenter holding a Bible and offering women information about the pregnancy support center. For Alcorn, the act of abortion became real when observing women going in and out of the facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe then decided to form a united physical barrier to the building\u2019s entrance,\u201d Alcorn said. \u201cWhat we were doing was illegal; however, we knew that, according to Planned Parenthood, one out of every four women will continue her pregnancy if an appointment at the clinic is cancelled or rescheduled. For us, the risk was worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were some successes: a few women responded to the team\u2019s outreach efforts by promising to reconsider their choice to have an abortion. But it wouldn\u2019t be long before the pro-life activists were arrested and sitting in a jail cell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went from quietly serving at the pregnancy support center to being on the front page of the newspaper,” he said. “In all, I was arrested seven times during nine peaceful pro-life interventions. We adhered to a code to always be respectful, to be Christlike. Our mission was to help women. We never caused unrest, but sadly, it was unpopular to speak out for the unborn.”<\/p>\n

In one instance, a sympathetic judge informed Alcorn he\u2019d be supportive of their cause if he wasn\u2019t serving in the role of a jurist required to render judgment on those who stood before him.<\/p>\n