“This is a day of thanksgiving and a day to rejoice and realize that prayers are powerful,” Eleanor McCullen said of the news that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion to the American people. Their elected leaders.
McCullen, 85, has been praying for Roe’s turnaround for 22 years.
“I think so many people have prayed,” the Boston resident and life advocate told The Daily Signal. “It took perseverance.”
McCullen was on an errand to the library Friday morning when her Catholic priest, Father Tom DiLorenzo, called to ask if she’d heard the news about Roe.
“He said, ‘It’s good news,’ [and] I said, ‘Father, it’s great news!'”
It was during one of DiLorenzo’s prayer services more than 20 years ago, McCullen says, that God called her to take action behind her pro-life beliefs.
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She became actively involved in the pro-life movement in Boston and began praying outside her local abortion clinic. She soon started talking to women who came to the clinic for an abortion, advising them and offering practical support to those who chose to keep their babies.
McCullen estimates she played a role in saving the lives of about 300 babies. Now she hopes millions of lives will be held by the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe.
“We must go ahead and praise the Lord for this decision and realize that many babies will be saved,” she told The Daily Signal, adding that “men and women will also be saved and helped.”
In their 80s, McCullen continues to advise women considering abortion and guide them through their pregnancy and beyond.
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A nine-week pregnant woman “called me last night to say she had decided to go ahead with the birth of the baby,” McCullen said. McCullen said she would continue to advise and help the mother because “she needs to know I’m there and I’m not going anywhere.”
For women who have had an abortion, McCullen added, she believes God wants them to “know His grace” and “don’t want you to get stuck in that depression.”
Friday’s ruling overturned Roe was a 5-4 decision, with Judge Samuel Alito penning the majority opinion in the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also hugely wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was passed,” Alito wrote.
Now the issue of regulating abortion returns to the American people and their state’s elected leaders. Already 26 states have enacted laws to protect the unborn, but conditions such as Oregon, Alaska, and Vermont still allow abortion until a baby is born.
For McCullen, the battle for life is far from over. In her home state of Massachusetts, she says, the abortion law “probably won’t change much.”
†[The] The Massachusetts Constitution says you can have an abortion up to the ninth month,” McCullen said.
“We pray for states in making their decisions about abortion,” she added:
You should still pray for the people who cannot see life as a miracle. So prayer is still powerful; we must continue. But for today, we would say, today is to rejoice.
LifeNews Note: Virginia Allen writes for The Daily Signal, where this column originally appeared.