By Liz Townsend
Editor’s note. This story from the September 2005 edition of National Right to Life News is a wonderful way to end this week’s “Roe at 40” where we are reproducing some of the best stories from the “pro-life newspaper of record” going all the way back to 1973. If you are not a subscriber to NRL News, please call us at 202-626-8828. Have a great weekend and be sure to share stories using your social media.
When Dave and Mary Labun of Millinocket, Maine, received an “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart” bumper sticker in the mail from a pro-life group, they weren’t sure they wanted to put it on their car. “I usually don’t like bumper stickers,” Labun told NRL News, “but I felt that I should put this one on.”
That reluctant decision led to an amazing result when Mary Labun discovered a note on the windshield early one morning as she was leaving to bring Communion to shut-ins. It was raining that day, and the note was enclosed in a plastic baggie.
When she read the note, Mrs. Labun was amazed. It was from a teenage girl, who wrote that she was pregnant and scared, thinking about abortion. Passing the Labun’s house on her way to school, she saw the bumper sticker.
“My heart droped,” she wrote. “I belive God was talking to me, through that sticker, and I also belive I will never think about it [abortion] again, I’m going to keep my baby and I’m not that scared anymore.”
She signed the note, “God Bless, A very happy mother-to-be.”
“We couldn’t believe it,” Dave Labun said. “Someone’s life was saved!”
The Labuns live just 300 yards from the local high school, so they believe the girl is a student there. Although they don’t know who she is, they said they hope one day to meet her and her baby.
Labun said that pro-lifers who have bumper stickers but don’t put them on their cars should reconsider. “Most people don’t preach on street corners, but your car goes everywhere,” he said. “Who knows how many other people have seen a bumper sticker at a time they’re making such a big, life-and-death decision?”