Editor's note:
C. Roy McMillan is the director of Christian Action Group of Mississippi where he has been active in the pro-life movement for many years. He has spent a total of two years in incarceration, and has been arrested more than 60 times and charged variously in the courts during the course of his pro-life activities. McMillan can be found most any day of the week within sight of the last abortion provider in the state of Mississippi. Found naked and abandoned at birth in a shoe box on the steps of a church, McMillan says that he bears a "burden from God" to advocate the cause of unborn babies and their mothers. His wife, Dr. Beverly McMillan, was the founder of the very first abortion clinic in Mississippi in the 1970s. Having since experienced a Christian conversion, and ceased the practice of abortion, she is a frequent speaker at churches and conferences.
In Mississippi there remains but one abortion center, down from a high of seven just twelve years ago. In 2001, the last year Mississippi's Department of Health provided abortion statistics, there were 3,566 abortions reported, a drop from a peak of 8,184 in 1991.
What happened that a state so long vilified by Hollywood, academics, feminists, and activists should
become so favorable to life? It came about because of a broad interference on the part of pro-life
Christians to broadly counteract the abortion industry throughout the state. My wife, Beverly McMillan MD, a former abortionist, and I have been players in this crusade to end abortion.
Pro-lifers have fought the culture of death - while saving lives, changing abortion-friendly laws and
judicial opinion, and swaying public opinion - on four fronts:
- 1) public education and awareness,
- 2) political/legislative action,
- 3) alternatives to abortion, and
- 4) public awareness through street-action.
While my wife and I, along with the Christian Action Group of Mississippi of which I am director, have been active in all of these areas, we have been most involved in the fourth. I liken this four-prong
assault on abortion to a four-legged stool that must have a cover; that cover is prayer. Our prayers
interfere with Satan's plans when we ask for God's guidance, blessings, and protection of our humble
efforts.
Public education and awareness
People perish through the absence of the truth. Through the efforts of Pro-Life Mississippi, as well
as other groups such as churches, we have interrupted the two biggest lies of the pro-abortion forces, i.e., that abortion does not kill, and that abortion is good for pregnant women. Of course, abortion kills life after conception. This is a fact. Nor is abortion good or healthy for pregnant mothers physically, emotionally, or spiritually.
Through the use of visual aids, we have made public the connection between life in utero and post utero by using photographs of pre-born, aborted, and born babies. We have pursued civil and criminal lawsuits against abortuaries and abortionists, while also seeking incriminating information on this murderous industry. We have publicized these facts to the general public, lawmakers, and public health protectors. We have educated and reminded the Christian community at every opportunity that God speaks in the Bible of the presence of unborn human life and of our responsibility individually, collectively, and through the civil government to protect human life and to provide for one another.
Political/legislative action
Mississippi has laws in place that are among the friendliest in the nation to both fetuses and their
mothers. Mississippi lawmakers would ban abortion if allowed to do so by the federal courts.
Through the years, Mississippi's pro-life movement has hel
