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40 Days for Life Campaign Extends to 7 Canadian Cities This Fall

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

September 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This Autumn, from September 23 to November 1, seven Canadian cities will join more than 200 cities across North America and around the world, for the largest and longest coordinated pro-life mobilization in history - the 40 Days for Life campaign.

40 Days for Life is an intensive pro-life initiative that focuses on 40 days of prayer and fasting, 40 days of peaceful witness at abortion facilities, and 40 days of grassroots educational outreach. The 40-day time frame is drawn from examples throughout Biblical history where God brought about world-changing transformation in 40-day periods.

The seed of the 40 Days for Life campaign was planted in Canada by Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), the country's national pro-life organization, with the first Canadian forty day vigil being kept in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2007.

There have now been four coordinated 40 Days for Life campaigns: in the fall of 2007, the spring of 2008, the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. These efforts have mobilized people of faith and conscience in cities across all 50 of the United States, five Canadian provinces, plus locations in Northern Ireland and Australia.

This autumn will see prayerful vigils being kept around the clock, seven days a week, for 40 days, at 8 abortion mills in 7 Canadian cities, including Halifax, NS, Fredericton, NB, Montreal, PQ, Ottawa, ON, Kitchener, ON, Toronto, ON (2), and Winnipeg, MB.

Kitchener 40 Days for Life campaign organizer Denise Cummins told LifeSiteNews.com that the response in her community has been very enthusiastic, with many area churches committing to covering the full 24 hours of certain days.

"We're very, very excited to have lots of positive feedback," Cummins said. "Just yesterday, another church committed to doing a full twenty-four hour coverage, with one individual committing to doing the 4 a.m. shift every day for the entire campaign."

Cummins said that news of the 40 Days for Life campaign in Kitchener is spreading rapidly, by word-of-mouth and by the presentations she has given, through many different churches and organizations. She says she is inundated with questions and requests for information about both signing up for vigil hours and the fundamentally important element of prayer support.

"Because this is a prayerful event," Cummins noted, "we depend on the prayer support of the prayer warriors at our churches."

Though the calendar is filling rapidly with registered vigil keepers, Cummins said that with the publicity generated by the kick-off rally planned for September 21, and once the campaign begins on the ground on September 23, many more people are expected to make a commitment to peacefully witness to life outside the abortuary.

"After the first few days, when people are actually out there, that generates excitement and people start signing up for more hours and more blocks of time are filled," Cummins said, and added that seeing someone witnessing to life encourages and empowers others to want to join and be part of the culture of life.

"That's what makes it so powerful. For 40 days people are going to be out there, morning noon and night, and that's very powerful, and empowers people to want to be part of something that is making a difference."

Information on this Fall's 40 Days for Life campaign in all Canadian cities, including contacts for signing up for vigil hours and kick-off rally schedules, is available here.

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