As he did more than 20 years ago in Texas, Dr. Haywood Robinson stood in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic March 20 in Roanoke and prayed its days of performing abortions would end, just like that one in College Station.
About 50 men and women were with him on a breezy late afternoon, about as many as showed up for the first vigil near Texas A&M University that three years later became the 40 Days for Life campaign.
“You know how it is when God tells you what to do and it’s not quite as complicated as you want it to be,” Robinson said. “Stand in front. Pray. Be faithful. So that’s what happened.”
During these events, he said, the group has found that the number of women coming for abortions tends to drop. “Not by blocking the driveway, but by simply standing out here, interceding,” he said.
He told them that he knows how efficient these places are. “The way it works, you always have at least two abortion rooms working – as soon as you’re finished with one, you just walk right to the other one,” he explained.
Robinson said he knows how it works – because he used to do it.
For years after getting his medical degree, abortion was part of his professional practice and personal experience. He said he once bullied a girlfriend into having an abortion. “That baby would be about 51 years old right now,” he said. “I aborted my first child. Think about that. I allowed the enemy to take away my opportunity to be a father.”
A few years later, he said he got another girlfriend pregnant and wanted her to have an abortion. But she didn’t. She had a girl who’s become a doctor and now has three children and a grandchild. “You see what happens when life abounds,” he said.
But then he almost let life wither again. Returning from their honeymoon and about to open their own practice, he and his late wife Noreen learned she was pregnant. They weren’t sure this was the best time to have a child.
“We were actually contemplating aborting our first child after we’re married and finished residency,” he said. “Is that the most ridiculous thing ever?” A friend and doctor they approached about doing the abortion told them it was.
“And so that baby, which was conceived on our honeymoon, is now 43. And that child just had a child, who’s a year old,” he said.
By 1981, he and Noreen had stopped doing abortions but still did provide referrals. Five years later, he had a conversion, accepted Jesus Christ and became a leader in the pro-life movement. They wrote about their change of heart in a memoir, “The Scalpel and the Soul.”
As the medical and education director for the 40 Days for Life organization, he and his new wife, Daphne, spend much of their time supporting the groups who are standing up for the unborn. The organization expects about a million people to engage in prayer and protest outside about 650 abortion clinics around the world during this Lenten season.
Most of the people in the crowd are veterans of vigils outside the Roanoke clinic. They stand on the side of a busy divided highway – praying, singing hymns, and displaying anti-abortion signs to passing drivers. Most honk horns in support; some hurl hateful words.
Joan Murano is one of the protest coordinators and asked Robinson to come talk to the group. “I thought he did a great job,” she said. “I just loved everything he said. And it just makes me feel like, yes, I am doing the right thing. We’re on the harder side. It’s the harder thing to do.”
Dorothy Marshall told the group that it can be hard for many pregnant young women to reject abortion and give life to their unborn children. She’s the director of a local Mary’s Haven, a program that provides a home for women committed to carrying their babies to term.
Marshall said that their decision to choose life often means turning away from life in the drug culture and the only friends they have. “I can’t tell you how much I admire these young ladies for what they’re trying to do,” she said. “I often tell them that they’re the greatest people in the world. They love their babies and they want to break the cycle of abuse.”
That abortion clinic in College Station ended up closing and the 40 Days for Life organization bought it. The building had room for a couple of family medicine doctors, too – Haywood and Noreen Robinson. The people showing their devotion to life outside the Roanoke clinic hope that someday this clinic may meet a similar fate.