12 Marian Helper • Fall 2022 • Marian.org Renewing a Culture of Life! Iwas taking part in a lovely Irish dancing festival in the Catskills when I heard a message that would change my life forever. A priest who hailed from the Emerald Isle had been invited to celebrate Mass for the festivalgoers. During the homily, he recounted his shock and horror over a politician’s refusal to sign legislation protecting preborn babies from the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion, in which a baby is partly delivered, then killed. At the homily’s conclusion, he sang an Irish ballad that spoke to a mother’s sacrifice for her child. I began to weep, and I knew that the time for dancing had passed. I felt a calling to become more actively engaged in helping pregnant women and their babies amidst what Pope St. John Paul II referred to as the “Culture of Death.” I would eventually leave my career in secular journalism behind to work full-time in the pro-life movement. My goal was to work for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the tragic 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states. By Maria V. Gallagher After ‘Roe’ Photo by Monica Elizabeth/Wikipedia
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