SAN DIEGO — Pamela Rieger was “stunned” when a pregnant friend, a mother of two, told her that she planned to get an abortion.
Rieger had never given serious thought to the issue before and had fallen away from the Catholic Church about a decade earlier. Forty years later, she still regrets the way she responded when her friend solicited her opinion.
“I told her I would support her in whatever decision she made,” she said. “I later deeply regretted this.”
Upon returning to the Catholic Church, Rieger said, she “immediately” asked to be connected with her parish’s pro-life ministry. She began praying in front of the Planned Parenthood facility on First Avenue in downtown San Diego and was trained as a “sidewalk counselor,” offering pro-life resources to abortion-minded women in the hope of convincing them to choose life for their unborn child.
Rieger, now 76, has been active in the ministry for a little over three years now.
She does sidewalk counseling and leads the “prayer warriors” from 7:30 to 10 a.m. every Wednesday and Friday outside the downtown Planned Parenthood.
Rieger is currently the coordinator of Culture of Life Ministries at Mary Star of the Sea Parish in La Jolla and leads the 40 Days for Life campaign, held twice a year, outside the downtown facility.
Held on the same dates in communities around the world, 40 Days for Life seeks to protect the unborn through fasting, prayer and peaceful, round-the-clock prayer vigils outside abortion clinics.
The most recent 40 Days for Life campaign concluded Nov. 2.
To others who are interested in standing up for the sanctity of life and defending the unborn, Rieger extends an invitation.
“I would invite them to come out and pray in front of the (Planned Parenthood) facility with me for just one hour,” she said. “I’d share with them that prayer in front of that place is so powerful, so impactful to the people walking into that facility and to those driving by that see us there praying, signs out, ready to help them, to love them throughout their crisis pregnancy, to witness for Christ and … to let the mothers and fathers know that they and their child are loved by God, and by us.”
