This past summer, I decided to spend two weeks with my aunt in Denver, Colorado to do some volunteer work with a Catholic youth group while visiting some relatives. Little did I know that I would end up outside of Planned Parenthood with 15 other teenagers listening to screams and blow horns looking at vulgar posters of deceased babies.
Three months prior to my arrival in Denver, I booked my flight to visit my favorite aunt and do community service with a program called Christ in the City. I called my aunt (who is very involved in the Catholic church, since my uncle is a deacon) to see what kind of volunteer work I would be doing. She told me it would be basic work with the homeless and charities related to people in need, which is what I was expecting, so I decided to join the program.
After a two-hour flight, I went to my aunt's house in Denver and directly to sleep. The next morning I would wake up and experience the most memorable and heart-wrenching days of my life. It tested my comfort zone, completely took me off guard and immersed me in one of the most debated topics of today: abortion.
My aunt, who founded a pro-life clinic across the street from Planned Parenthood, is very against abortion and very current with this topic. She showed me the schedule for the day, labeled on the calender as "Pregnancy Day," which consisted of touring Alternatives (a pro-life clinic), praying the rosary outside of Planned Parenthood, and working with the Gabriel Project folding baby clothes and cleaning baby bottles.
After touring the Alternatives facility, seeing counseling rooms for pregnant and post-abortion women, my aunt decided that she wanted to show the group her clinic, called Lighthouse. When my aunt and I pull up in front of the clinic, I heard her say, "Not again. I have to call somebody about this. This is not how we do things. This is horrendous." When I looked up at her and then out my window, I saw plastic baby limbs hanging on strings covered in red paint on the tree branches covering the whole street. I then looked down at the stumps of the trees and saw posters of black and blue aborted babies with the title "Obama Nation." After I closed my eyes in horror, I started hearing the screams of the crowd of people in front of Planned Parenthood yelling at each car that drove into the lot.
I took out my rosary and got out of the car to meet with my group to go pray for the struggling women who are being yelled at by crowds of angry people waving vulgar posters out of their windows. Fifteen teenagers and I clenched our rosaries, got into a circle and started the Apostles Creed: Day One.