Catholic '40 Days For Life' Campaign To Highlighting Abortion Issues Related To Election Begins In Connecticut

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 29 Sep 2008 - 5:00 PST

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Roman Catholics in Connecticut are participating in a national religious campaign in which participants sign up for fasting and silent prayers at clinics with the hope of raising awareness of abortion issues related to the November election, the Hartford Courant reports. The campaign, called "40 Days for Life," began on Wednesday and will continue through Nov. 2. According to the Courant, the 40 Days of Life campaign started in 2004 in Texas and now has spread to 170 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The campaign's timing was intentional to coincide with the presidential election in the hope that voters will "become aware of the issues concerning abortion and vote for candidates who are pro-life," Mary Lou Peters, assistant program coordinator for pro-life activities for the Archdiocese of Hartford and campaign director for the 40 Days of Life campaign in Hartford, said. Peters said the "breakdown of the family" is the underlying cause for "so many issues in our society, which means the ramifications of abortions spread out far past the issue of a baby dying." Participants from dozens of parishes throughout Connecticut have signed up to pray and fast outside of clinics in the Hartford and Norwich dioceses, as well as perform 24 hours of silent prayer in their churches.

Andrew Walsh -- associate director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College -- said that the Catholic vote "cashes out in extremely complicated ways" and is not always uniform across the U.S. Walsh said that even though many Catholics agree with the church's opposition to abortion rights, "it's a minority when it comes to shaping voting patterns," adding that Catholics in New England show through polling data a tendency to vote Democratic. "New England couldn't be this blue unless most Catholics were voting for Democrats in most elections. There's just too many of them," Walsh said (Hamilton, Hartford Courant, 9/25).

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