The Abortion Outreach Ministry (AOM) has been active for quite some time at Franciscan University. On Saturday, Sept. 20, when the ministry group showed up to the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center–a clinic in Pittsburgh that provides abortions–they found out it was closed for the week.
Allegheny Reproductive Health Center was closed due to a dispute between the union and the management. Kay Zablocki, a sophomore political science major and a lead of abortion outreach, said of the closure, “It seems maybe from a surface perspective as administrative, but I don’t think you can deny the power that prayer and fasting has.”
While Zablocki is a lead of the sidewalk counseling ministry, he noted that “The biggest fruits of the ministry aren’t necessarily through sidewalk counseling.” Zablocki attributes a lot of the effectiveness of the ministry to the prayer side of the street. “The biggest impact we have is what we don’t see.”
Indeed, years of prayer have been poured into this ministry, praying and counseling with the hope of making the smallest dent in the clinic’s service. Grace Wolf, another lead, and a sophomore history and education major, said, “Every single hour we have where someone’s not going in is an hour worth praying and fasting for.”
During this week, the AOM leads decided to pray and fast to close the clinic down permanently. There were efforts to involve as many students as possible in this movement by tabling in the JC Williams Center, using videos, posters and even giving small cards to all students living on campus, where they could write their own commitment to pray and fast for the clinic’s closure.
Ministry volunteers stepped up to help more, households dedicated their prayers to this intention and countless individual students made personal prayer and fasting commitments. There was a rosary at the Tomb of the Unborn Child every night, except for Thursday, when a holy hour was hosted instead.
Ministry lead and sophomore mechanical engineering major Dan Staniszewski said that at least one of the rosaries, led in Latin by Pater Noster household, had roughly 50 to 60 attendants, and the holy hour, held in the Louis Liz Hall chapel, also had about 50 attendants.
“The fasting and prayer, that was so beautiful, because we had so many people involved,” said Wolf.
Currently, the clinic is running as before. Staniszewski said “It has reopened, as of Monday. That being said, we don’t really know what their internals look like.” He also cited the cut of federal funding, recent layoffs and union disputes with the CEO as underlying tensions, and said “We know that it can’t possibly be very stable.”
Wolf shared that one student went privately to pray for two hours–during the week, but still in the morning, during popular appointment times–and saw no one enter the clinic during those two hours.
Abortion outreach ministry planned a “mega-shift” on the first Saturday since the reopening, Oct. 4. “We decided, given this awesome event of it closing for the week, that we wanted to celebrate that,” said Staniszewski. The leads put out additional flyers for ministry on this day, and due to the recent closure, many were interested.
As of the preceding Friday, over 115 students signed up to pray outside of the clinic the following Saturday morning. This is almost twice as many as an ordinary Saturday, and over four times as many as a singular shift.
Staniszewski said that, overall, “It’s been really deeply touching to see people stepping forward out of the woodwork to devote themselves to this.” Wolf added that “It’s not our ministry, it’s Franciscan’s ministry,” and that she was excited to return to the clinic on the feast day of St. Francis and have his intercession invoked over it.