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Honor and Shame: Life in the Balance
By Fr. Dennis | July 10, 2008
Got 2 emails today from Sarah, who volunteers with Lifehouse, a shelter for pregnant women in Louisville:
I’m asking all the pro-life prayer warriors to please join me on your knees for a young couple who are currently being forced into an abortion situation by their family…neither of them want the abortion, but their family has a lot of pull over them right now.
Their names are Jessica & Frederick
Lifehouse staff has met with them both and we have a spot for Jessica if she decides to come…the pressure from her family is the only thing standing in her way right now because in her culture she has dishonored her family and could be disowned if she goes against their wishes.
Please pray like you’ve never prayed before…a precious young life hangs in the balance…and the future of a beautiful young girl and her fiance is at risk!
God bless you all!
For the voiceless-
Sarah
And then this follow-up:
I e-mailed earlier today concerning a young couple who was in need of prayer and since then the situation has drastically gotten worse!
The young mom (Jessica) and her fiance (Frederick) are both decided that they do not want to abort their baby, however, when Jessica’s sister and parents found out it all took a turn for the worse. Jessica’s sister drove up from Atlanta, Ga today, forced Jessica into the car and drove her back down to Atlanta where they scheduled an abortion for her this coming Saturday morning against her will. They have also cut her off from any contact with Frederick. Her parents are (as we speak) flying over from India to pressure her even more saying she is hurting their family name and that she is physically killing her parents by going through with this pregnancy outside of marriage.
I have spent the entire day calling all over the country to see if there is anything we could do legally (to protect Jessica & Frederick’s rights as parents) to no avail. The answer was that Jessica would have to stand up to the pressures of her family, risk disownment, and risk being forced back to India in shame. Right now Jessica is caving to her family even though she knows abortion is wrong and desperately doesn’t want it…the cultural family pressure is enormous!
Frederick has said that if he looses Jessica to her family and looses this baby he will have nothing to live for.
I am calling on anyone I know to please do a 24 hour prayer vigil for this couple!!! Please pray that God will give Jessica the strength and courage to walk away from her family if need be and pray that Frederick will find the hope in Christ he needs to get through this and not take his own life.
Thank you for spreading the word and thank you for your prayers!For the voiceless-
Sarah
Topics: Abortion |
July 11th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Absolutely! Mega prayers coming their way!
July 11th, 2008 at 9:33 am
very believable
we have a number of Indian friends here
stories i hear about family pride and position and status and caste, etc, are enormous pressures on them
we were to a high-school graduate’s open house party a few weeks ago- genuine Indian cuisine catered in from nearby big-city - an Indian female ‘top of the charts’ singer was brought in from India to entertain - pull out all the stops
he has been accepted into an accelerated medical science program at a medical school in NY
a tremendous honor to the family
many in attendance had come from India to ’share in’ the family honor he brought to them
really a lovely family [both parents are docs - a neuro-surgeon and a psychiatrist]
but the dad has shared with me a lot about his growing up in India - he had been sent away at a young age to a private boarding school so he would have the best education [run by a group of jesuits, there, by the way]
university and medical school were presumed of him
lots of family influence on all life choices
pregnancy out of wedlock would be looked down on
prayer for jessica & frederick