By Cheryl Sullenger
Last week I got a Thanksgiving present delivered to my post office box. It was the November/December, 2006 edition of the San Diego News Notes. Inside was a report listing all ObGyns in San Diego County and their positions on abortion.

Having conducted pro-life ministry in San Diego for about 20 years, I was very interested in this article. The News Notes has regularly published lists of local abortionists for many years, and the first of these lists that I remember reading contained the names of over 70 abortionists. That was in 1993.
At that time, Operation Rescue of San Diego, which consisted primarily of Troy Newman, myself, and a handful of others, sent letters out to every abortionist on that list asking them to stop the practice of abortions. Thankfully, some did.
We began to conduct neighborhood prayer walks near the homes of several of the most well known abortionists. After only four vigils, the largest abortionist in the county took an early retirement for “personal reasons.” The publicity from that victory helped other local abortionists to stop killing babies.
We continued to crank up the heat on the local abortionists, calling press conferences and publishing flyers that detailed their troubles with the Medical Board and malpractice suits. We prayed for their repentance at more neighborhood prayer walks.
By the time I left San Diego in 2003, over 40 of those original 72 abortionists had quit killing or moved out of the area.
As I carefully examined the most recent list, I discovered that even more abortionists have quit killing or relocated. Since the previous list was published in 2000, an additional 14 abortionists have left the killing industry or moved their bloody business to a community more tolerant of innocent bloodshed. I only saw about 3 or 4 new ones in the report.
By my count, there are 20 abortionists left in San Diego County, and at least four of them refuse to give out information over the phone about whether or not they still do the procedure. Another two will only do them for “medical reasons.”
That is a far cry from 1993, when over 70 men and women quietly killed babies in near anonymity. It is stunning to consider that over fifty men and women are no longer shedding innocent blood in that one U.S. county alone. What an awesome victory this is to reflect upon over the Thanksgiving holiday!
But this trend is not confined to the sunny metropolis of San Diego. Across the nation, as pro-lifers continue to faithfully minister, abortionists are quitting, having their licenses revoked, or retiring at an unprecedented rate. And there are few that are willing to take their places.
In addition, the past several months must have set some kind of record with the number of abortion mills closing or being shuttered by various state medical oversight agencies. We were privileged to have been able to contribute to this when God opened the doors for Operation Rescue to buy and close an abortion mill here in Wichita, KS.
In spite of the day’s headlines, or the latest election results, or the doom-and-gloom predictions of the nay-sayers, we are winning the battle for the lives of the innocent.
This Thanksgiving, as my family happily gathers around the holiday bird, I am going to be especially thankful to God for the blessing of fewer abortionists, in San Diego and all over the country, because that translates into fewer abortions and more little ones to gather at the tables across America where they will be counted as blessings by their very grateful families.
Yes, this year, there is much to be thankful for.
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