Life Issues

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Dear All

Operation Outcry is coming to New Zealand with a whistle stop tour of Auckland, Wellinton and Christchurch in late November '06, bios and Web site splash for Operation Outcry attached. Karen and Kay will be in Auckland Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd, Wellington Thursday 23rd and Friday 24th, Christchurch Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th November 2006.

It is intended that they be available for public meetings during the evenings and media contact or anything special that might be appropriate during business hours.

If you would like to assist or could contribute in any practical way to the success of their tour - to raise awareness of the harm that abortion causes and to bring hope and healing to every nation - please feel free to contact me.

Also, please note the following extract from a recent email that may be relevant:

OPERATION OUTCRY & THE JUSTICE FOUNDATION

The projects were born when two women used to legalize abortion in the U.S. came to Mr. Parker, and asked for help to overturn their landmark cases. Being a man of God, he prayed and was led to a scripture that confirmed what he was called to do. As the project grew and the call became louder, Operation Outcry was formed. It is our intent to end legal abortion by exposing the truth about its devastating impact on women and families. We believe that this will be accomplished through prayer and with the testimonies of mothers who have taken the life of their own unborn babies and of others who have suffered harm from abortion. We are working to restore justice and to protect women, men and children from the destruction that abortion causes.

OPERATION OUTCRY has a national network of leaders to assist, encourage, and train women and others to speak out in the public arena and to collect affidavits for the historic legal effort to end legal abortion.

OPERATION OUTCRY INTERNATIONAL is working to bring the truth that abortion hurts women and the message of hope and healing to every nation. The cultures may differ, but the devastation of abortion remains the same.

OPERATION OUTCRY teams assist efforts in other nations to establish networks and to partner with pregnancy care centers, abortion recovery programs, and pro-life groups in countries around the world.

We are also training teams in preparing and delivering their testimonies, providing interviews to media and referring women who need healing to local resources.

Currently they have effectively trained women in Israel and Holland and are currently networking with other pro-life women in Italy, France, and Indonesia.

We are excited to have been invited to bring an Operation Outcry team to Australia though speaking opportunities; we desire to raise awareness about how ABORTION HURTS WOMEN. As we are so close to New Zealand and the trip so long, we are preparing to make connections for both countries on one visit. Our goal would be to raise up Australian and New Zealand women to share their testimonies. We also have a prayer team of over 30 people who have committed to daily pray for this trip and those we can serve.

By contacting you we are hoping that we might be able, in some way and help raise the awareness of the cry for abortions to end. We desire to help bring hope and healing to women in your area.

I hope this perhaps clears up any questions you might have. For more information please check us out on our website www.operationoutcry.org.

God bless

Greg van Slyke

At age 18, I learned I was pregnant from my first sexual encounter. Morning sickness was the first tell-tale sign that my body was changing and a new life was growing inside me. As I hung my head over the toilet, I sobbed uncontrollably, realizing that my life would never be the same. I was overwhelmed with fear and shame and knew that I needed help. When I told the baby's father, he ended our relationship immediately.

I felt abandoned and alone. I was a junior in college and was told that dropping out of college to have a child would ruin my life and future career. The only "choice" discussed was abortion. I was ashamed to be pregnant and unmarried, so I thought that abortion would solve my problem.

I felt pressured to have the abortion quickly because I was very close to the twelve week cutoff. There was no time to think about any other options. If I had the abortion, no one would have to know about my pregnancy. I would save my family from shame.

I was told that I could forget about the abortion and go on with my life without any consequences. “You don't even have to admit that you were ever pregnant,” was their advice. I believed the lie that it was just a blob of tissue that could be thrown away.

But I couldn’t forget. In dating relationships, the first thing I would reveal was my abortion because I was terrified of being rejected. For years I was "pro-abortion" because I thought I had to justify my own abortion.

I lived with chronic depression and spent time in a mental hospital with a nervous breakdown because of the fear that I would not ever have any children. I felt like I was living in slow motion because my once sharp mind was so dull. It took over two years to recover my ability to think and react normally.

The abortion experience left me depressed and confused. I later learned that my 12-week-old unborn baby had a beating heart and fully developed arms and legs. My baby was not some undefined blob of tissue. If only I had seen a picture of fetal development, I would never have chosen abortion. I felt lied to and deceived.

I want America to know that abortion hurts women. Women are created to love and nurture their children, not have them ripped from their wombs and thrown away.

There is a disconnect in every woman’s heart and mind when she consents to abortion. Although she tries to forget the abortion and suppress the memories, eventually she will face the reality that her own child was mutilated by abortion. My denial lasted 21 years. I wept uncontrollably from the depths of my soul for three days when I finally faced the truth. The weeping released the hidden pain and began a journey of healing that led me to forgiveness. I remember crying out: Where are the women? Where are the women that are willing to speak about the tragedy of abortion?

I did not want more women to go through the intense pain and suffering that I had experienced. I knew that I would have to speak and that my story would encourage other women suffering in silence to come forward and seek emotional healing and forgiveness.

Karen Bodle is the Pennsylvania State Leader for Operation Outcry, a national movement of women hurt by abortion who are speaking out about the pain and consequences they have lived with. Her heart's cry is to see abortion become a socially unacceptable choice in the US and around the world.

Karen has a degree in Mathematics and Education from Juniata College. After a few years as a high school math teacher, she changed careers and worked as a programmer, systems analyst, and project manager. While living in Buenos Aires, Argentina on assignment with IBM, she had a life-changing experience that led her into her current career -- helping women recover from abortion. Karen resides in Harrisburg with her teenage daughter.

“Lucky for you, now days you have a choice!” The words came from a nurse standing as an observer in the examination room. How could I have known the impact they would have on my life? I had just discovered I was pregnant at age 39. My two girls were almost grown, and I had a new growing business that demanded my time and offered recognition and prestige. What would I do with a baby? So I latched onto her words, and after discussing it (convincing), my husband made the appointment, I bought their EASY way out. My counseling was, “Does your husband know? and, “Have you signed the release. Step into a gown; you’ll find it down the hall.”

I am thankful that I have no memory of the abortion, but the instant I heard my baby’s helpless body hit the garbage can, I KNEW! I had just killed my own flesh and blood, an innocent life. I was panic-stricken, the nurse callously told me to “calm down, in a few days all would be back to normal.”

Lucky? Normal? No one forewarned me of the repercussions of an abortion. It was a simple procedure of removing “tissue,” so why the pain, the sudden emptiness? I awoke night after night to the sound of screams, they were mine! I know now my girls heard them from their rooms only to pull the covers over their heads. I wanted to speak with my pastor, but what would he think of me? Here I was sitting weekly in the choir, and yet I had killed my baby. I considered my best friend, but she was a Christian. Would she be repelled and turn away? And to those I knew who were not Christians, they’d most likely tell me to get over it! It’s done all the time. It seemed there was not a soul to share with; I held it all in.

The nightmares continued, the depression got deeper, and I found myself detached from everyone and everything. I prayed for another chance, another baby; and within the next year God gave us a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I was sure the guilt was behind me; God had given me a second chance. The screams stopped, but the nightmare of my “choice” was far from over. I would leave the room when abortion was discussed, terrified people would see it on my face, I found the church community was too “goody-goody for me, so I quit. Church was for people who were good.

The abortion followed me through the next 16 years, bringing isolation, bad choices, horribly ugly divorce, unspeakable shame, terrible loneliness, and a depression to deep so I denied its existence.

Finally when my replacement baby was 16, God, in his mercy, brought me to my knees. As my guilt began to surface while at work one day, I pleaded sick and went home. There are no words to express the deep dark hole I found myself in, no phrase to describe the depth of my despair. God placed it on my heart to drive directly to my doctor’s office, where I was rushed into a private exam room. There I took the first step to healing by “telling.” He set me up with a high dosage of Prozac and a Christian counselor who began seeing me immediately and almost daily for the next three and a half months.

It took every ounce of strength I could muster to tell my ugly secret to my new pastor. Daily, I revisited the pain of my “lucky choice” and the “quick fix” I had chosen years before. It was during this time I rediscovered God’s overwhelming Grace and Mercy to even me, one who killed of my own flesh! Mountains of guilt were removed and tons of shame taken away. I was no longer alone. It was then I promised to help other women in their struggle and that I would be “Silent No More”.

Kay was born to a farmer and his wife, in a small rural community outside of Portland, Oregon. She has two daughters and a son. Kay worked in the floral industry for years, until about three years ago. At that time she promised God, she would share her abortion experience to help others. She has been speaking out ever since. She speaks at ladies retreats, Pro-life functions, churches, and anywhere possible. She is a counselor at a local Lifeline Pregnancy Center weekly, and works with Generation Life & Idaho Chooses Life groups locally.