Two pro-life groups have banded together to open a new office across the street from late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart, who started working at a Maryland abortion business.
Although he retains an abortion center in Omaha, Nebraska legislators largely drove him from the state when they passed a law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the scientific evidence showing unborn children feel pain at that age.
Now, Operation Rescue and the Maryland Coalition for Life announced they leased office space directly across the parking lot from LeRoy Carhart’s late-term abortion business in Germantown. They told LifeNews.com the office will be used as a place of prayer for pro-life supporters, but will also act as a resource and referral center for vulnerable and needy pregnant women as well as post-abortive women. The Maryland Coalition for Life will be coordinating efforts with local pregnancy care centers and a nearby physician who has offered to provide free ultrasounds to abortion vulnerable women.
Operation Rescue first discovered that Carhart had been hired last December to do late-term abortions at Germantown Reproductive Health Services. Since then, it has worked behind the scenes to secure the office and provide support for local pro-life groups and to help organize and lead protests, and provide training and encouragement to area activists.
“Locating an office like this across from the most notorious late-term abortionist in the country was a high priority for us. We wanted to do more than just ask women not to abort their babies. We wanted to provide them with practical assistance, spiritual guidance, and true friendship so that abortion would no longer be a consideration. This office will do all of that,” said Operation Rescue president Troy Newman.
The new pro-life center will not be a place where protests and pickets take place, but will focus on helping women and on prayer. However, hundreds of pro-life supporters will continue to maintain a peaceful First Amendment presence on the public sidewalk outside the business park where the abortion business and the pro-life Center are located.
“This Center is going to have a profound impact on Germantown by offering women a life-affirming alternative directly across the parking lot from Carhart’s late-term abortion mill. The churches and the community of Germantown have really come together to make this a reality,” said Michael Martelli, director of Maryland Coalition for Life.
The Maryland Coalition for Life plans to move into the new office on April 2, 2011.
