Dear Pro-Life Partners,
To help stop the anti-life push around the world, the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen encouraged the spiritual adoption of the unborn child. This 9-month prayer program, started in 1983 as a response to the original 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, was designed to align with 9 months of pregnancy and intercede for unborn children in danger of being aborted.

The first time I heard of “Spiritual Adoption” was when I joined the Respect Life Committee with my husband at St. Thomas More back in, oh I would say, 2017. I thought, “What a neat idea” which is about as far as my commitment went. The next time, I gladly wrote the name of an imagined little one on a paper dove, vowed to pray faithfully, then rarely remembered to do so. It was in the fall before Covid, I believe, that it clicked. By this time, my husband and I were leading the Respect Life Committee, so we had to be good examples, of course. I did not know of anyone who was pregnant, so I wrote the name “Chloe” on a magnet and promptly took it home and put it on my fridge. This simple act changed everything. I kid you not, I prayed for that little girl every day for 9 months. Why? Because each time I went to the kitchen for a snack, there she was! This was an act of obedience on my part and I left it at that. I just prayed and knew that God would handle the rest.

Fast forward about two years. I was listening to Jonathan Maren from Life Site News interview Laura Klassen, the founder of Choice 42, an online crisis pregnancy helpline. Laura told the story of a woman (let’s call her Jane) who called the hotline and spoke to Laura at length about her pregnancy. Jane called back to tell Laura that she had an abortion. Laura felt as though she had not done enough to sway Jane from this decision and worked on changing her counseling strategies to be more proactive and direct. As so often happens, Jane called Laura shortly thereafter to tell her she was pregnant again. This time, Laura unapologetically urged Jane not to murder her child. Jane, already feeling regret from her first abortion, resonated with the term “murder” and agreed to have her baby. This is a nice success story, true, but it was Laura’s next comment that sent chills up my spine and brought tears to my eyes. “This would have been about two years ago, and she named her baby Chloe.”

Dear friends, Jane was carrying Chloe at the same time (literally September to May) that I was praying for a little girl named Chloe that I didn’t even know. Coincidence? Very possibly. But if nothing else, God was encouraging me to be faithful in prayer, assuring me that he hears my prayers, and illustrating that, yes, prayer can save lives. We may never know this side of heaven how our prayers impact those around us, but we can know that we serve a sovereign and omnipotent God that can handle all the details. So we invite you to join us in spiritually adopting a child and praying daily for that child for the next 9 months. You will also be blessed in the process. I still pray for Chloe three years later and for a yet-to-be-born Chloe every year. Oh, and my husband prays for Brady James, so that little guy is covered.

Partnering with You for Life!
Linda Verhulst, MRL-WR