Prayer Vigil to Witness to the Sanctity of Human Life and End Abortion
We are pleased to announce that your prayers have been successful as Dr. Leroy Carhart lost his malpractice insurance and is no longer performing surgical abortions in Bethesda or anywhere else in the country. We are informed that his clinic is still offering chemical abortions up to 11 weeks similar to most other abortion providers. Accordingly, your prayers and witness are still needed. Women often report that the prayers and presence of pro-life witnesses at abortion clinics dissuaded them from abortions.
The Spring Bethesda 40 Days for Life campaign begins on Ash Wednesday, March 2 and continues until April 10. Prayer vigils are requested in hourly slots from 7 am to 7 pm. Full details on the prayer campaign are available here. https://www.40daysforlife.com/en/bethesda St. Raphael’s is once again supporting the campaign by praying a rosary on the public sidewalk in front of Leroy Carhart’s late term abortion facility at the Wildwood Medical Center, 10401 Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda each Saturday during hourly slots from 10 – 4 pm am from March 5 through April 9. Many of us meet in the vestibule after the 9 am Mass, if you have questions or need help with directions, but please come and pray during one of these hourly slots on Saturdays for six (6) weeks. We are asking for just one (1) of the 168 hours God gives you each week for six (6) weeks. If Saturday does not work for you, please pick another day. What could be more important than protecting the lives of innocent babies and their mothers from the devasting effects of abortion?
Please use our SignUp Genius website at https://bit.ly/40DFL2022 to sign up for one or more hourly slots, so we can ensure maximum coverage. Signs are available in a bin located at 5944 Avon Drive (behind the clinic). Please return the signs when you are done or give them to the people praying the following hour for them to return. The people praying from 3 - 4pm should return all the borrowed signs.
Are you facing an unplanned pregnancy and are being pushed to resolve the “problem”? You do not have to face this decision alone or make it hastily. There are several life-affirming resources available to help not to regret your decision. They are as follows:
Shady Grove Pregnancy Center Centro Tepeyac Pregnancy Center
16220 N. Frederick Road, #118 12248 Georgia Avenue
Gaithersburg, MD 20877 Silver Spring, MD 20902
301-963-6223 301-587-9516
www.pregnancy-options.org/ www.centrotepeyac.org/
Archdiocese of Washington Resources
Visit: http://www.adw.org/pregnant-need-help/
Healing after an abortion?
Call Project Rachel at 301-853-4565
The Mustard Seed Project is a letter-writing campaign that sends out a letter to the organizations and corporations who support Planned Parenthood (PP) with annual or personal charitable giving programs. These organizations and corporations have in some cases supported PP for decades. The letter-writing process has been effective in changing the minds of CEOs to no longer support PP and has resulted in the loss of funding in the millions. A letter is composed with a difference entity every month. The RFL Committee encourages parishioners to copy the letter and mail it to the addressee for that month’s letter. Links to the letters are available on the menu on the left.
Angel Friends are trained volunteers from local churches who help clients in crisis pregnancies with practical, emotional and spiritual support and accompany them through pregnancy and beyond as needed. Clients are referred to teams through Gabriel Network. If you are interested in joining the Angel Friend Team at St. Raphael's, please contact Carol DeGraba, cdegraba@gmail.com.
St. Raphael’s Respect for Life Committee (RFL) seeks to promote a greater reverence in both our parish and faith community, for the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. We approach this task with a readiness to nurture and sustain this precious gift of human life through pro-life education, advocacy, works of charity and prayer. In an effort to successfully promote a culture of life in an increasingly complex world, we share the Catholic Church’s teachings on a wide range of life issues, such as abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia, Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS), contraception, infertility procedures and the death penalty. We humbly commit ourselves to spreading the message of God’s Word and Love as it pertains to the infinite values of each human life created in His very image and likeness (Genesis 1:26). We support St. Pope John Paul II’s comments during his 1999 visit to St. Louis: “And so, America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth, the truth revealed by God.”