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PRO-CHOICE PRAYER PROJECT 2005

Barbara Gerlach, Minister at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, DC - excerpt from prayer written for the March for Women's Lives April 25, 2004

Help us to break the silence and secrecy, the stigma and shamethat often accompany an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.

Help us to support women in facing the complicated mix of feelings – grief and relief, guilt and empowerment, compassion and understanding that can accompany the making and taking responsibility for difficult decisions.

Help us to respect the right and wisdom of each woman to chose what is best for herself
so that is may be a time of growth, deepening and maturing.

Let us pray for those women we know who have had to make difficult reproductive decisions, those who have chosen or been forced to have an abortion, to put a child up for adoption,
who have gone through with a pregnancy and raised a child as a single parent or married quickly.

Help us to reflect on the difficult decisions in our own livesand trust the leading and guiding of you spirit. Amen

Rebekah, Pikesville

Barukh atah adonai eloheinu melekh haolam asher natan lee laledet bazman asher bakharti.

Blessed are you adonai our God ruler of the world who allowed me to give birth at the time of my choosing.

Suzanne, Silver Spring

Dear G-d, for these things I pray: for strength to endure through hardship, for compassion when I make mistakes, and for freedom to make the choices which are best for me.

An anonymous prayer:

Spirit of Life and Love, we give thanks for our lives and the lives of our children. Our homes are warm and dry. There is food on our tables. There is love between us. We are blessed.

We remember those who do not have what we have. Our hearts reach out to the homeless, the hungry, the unloved. May our actions follow the movement of our hearts that we may act to help those in need.

We remember particularly children and parents. May the neglected, abused, and abandoned children of this world someday soon find homes and love. May no one feel forced to bring a child into this world for which she
cannot care.

We remember parents struggling with their own illnesses, addictions,homelessness and unemployment. May they find ways to be loving, caring parents in spite of all obstacles.

Help our society to see that health care and access to family planning
benefit all people. Give us the will to work to see that the poor and the young do not feel that unsafe sex is the only sex to which they have access and emergency room deliveries are the only physician’s care they and their
babies need or deserve.

We pray today for the boys and men who only know how to impregnate and not how to father. We pray today for the girls on the street or in foster care who think having a baby is a way to find love.

We pray today for the mentally ill and for the alcohol and drug-addicted whose illnesses and addictions sometimes cloud their judgment, and we pray for their children.

We pray for women and men who do not wish to be parents and those who do not think they could be good parents. When they are faced with an unplanned pregnancy may they not be forced to be what they do not feel they can
be or to do what they feel they cannot do.

We pray for those who look for love in sex knowing nowhere else to look. When they find only heartbreak or disease or both may our hearts not turn from them but open to them with warmth and compassion.

May our hearts be open, may our hands be ready to lift up, and may our
understanding guide us to seek to better life for ourselves and others this day and always. Amen.

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