“Abortion Kills Children.” That was the message repeated hundreds of thousands of times along major roadways across the country one Sunday last month. More than 771,000 people at 373 locations in 42 states took part in National Life Chain Sunday, held October 6. Organizers took careful measures to assure an accurate count of participation.
“We want the media to respect credibility, believing that it might help lead to a breakthrough for fair reporting on the part of the major media,” says Royce Dunn, national director of Life Chain, noting that poster bearers were counted individually at each site.
The three-word message was selected after considerable prayer and thought, Dunn says. “We wanted something that would capture, as simply and briefly as possible, the truth about the nature of abortion. We wanted the message to be sufficiently strong, because the opposition has been so enormously successful in steering debate their way by taking killing out of the picture.”
A second message, “Jesus Forgives and Heals,” was also displayed, primarily by clergy, “as a compassionate statement for women who have had abortions,” Dunn says.
For the past four years, Life Chains have been organized by the tax-exempt corporation Please Let Me Live (PLML), based in Yuba City, California. The soft-spoken Dunn, who runs a small real-estate business there, has served as president of PLML since it was chartered in 1985. Though Life Chain has become its most visible activity, PLML has engaged in various prolife activities, including helping to found a local crisis pregnancy center and distributing literature door-to-door.
The first Life Chain was “built” in 1987 by slightly more than 2,000 people along three miles of roadway near Yuba City. Two years later Christians in Bakersfield, California, organized a Life Chain, and the concept began to gain prominence.
Working with local churches across the country, PLML coordinated 165 separate Life Chains last year, held at different times and locations. Last month’s event marked the first time Life Chain activities were coordinated on a national level, PLML provides all the materials needed to form a Life Chain, including the posters.
Though the witness to various communities and passing motorists is important, Dunn says, the primary ministry of Life Chain is to awaken participants themselves to prolife action. The date for another national event next year has not yet been announced, but Dunn says he hopes to see Life Chains at 700 locations.
