Pro-life Christians in Pittsburg organize sidewalk ministry at new abortion clinic

Want to take part in the sidewalk training?
A Sidewalk Volunteer Training will be conducted from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9, at Trinity Lutheran Church, 109 W. St. John St. in Girard. To register email
[email protected] or call 620-231-2135. Lunch and material will be provide free of charge.

The pro-life community in Pittsburg began organizing a presence at a proposed abortion clinic months before the clinic began taking the lives of the unborn.

Amanda Lehman, a Pittsburg resident, helped organize a Sidewalk Advocates for Life group that currently has a nearly continual presence at the city’s Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.

“We knew we wanted something up and running before they opened their doors,” she said last week. “Back in 2022, we attended a Sidewalk Advocates for Life training in Wichita with Stephanie Nemechek. She did a wonderful job and we loved the program. We didn’t look at any other programs.”

Nemechek is a coordinator for the diocesan Respect Life and Social Justice Office.

Lehman said she was attracted to the loving, peaceful, prayerful approach to the ministry – it advocated nothing aggressive.

“So we went ahead with training when we got the official word that there was a clinic opening. Before that, it was just a rumor,” she said.

First training in June

The first training in Pittsburg was hosted in June when the Respect Life and Social Justice Office trained 36 pro-lifers. In July and August, the office sponsored additional training during which similar numbers of advocates attended. About a dozen advocates took part in a September training. Another is planned for next month.

“Not everyone who attended the training works on the sidewalk,” Lehman said. “Those who feel called after the training have signed up.”

Nearly 70 Sidewalk Advocates for Life are now actively volunteering in some capacity, allowing the organization to have a presence at the abortion clinic almost every hour the clinic is open for business.

“We’re working to get those gaps closed,” she said, “because we’d like to have somebody there all the time praying and offering love to those women who are going into the abortion facility.”

Response is an ecumenical effort

The pro-life response is an ecumenical effort, Lehman said, adding that the community rallied around the effort. Catholics, Lutherans, members of the Assemblies of God, and several other denominations are working and praying together.

“It has been a beautiful thing for our community, a community that has always been very supportive of life,” she said. “We have a local pro-life pregnancy center and our communities have always supported them and we’re very encouraged.”

She said the response to organizing a pro-life presence at the abortion clinic was stronger than she anticipated.

“I know that our God is able to do far above and beyond what we can hope or imagine. So it has been a blessing to see the response,” she said. “We’re working through getting a kind of rhythm and keeping everybody stocked up on their supplies, but we have really enjoyed doing this ministry and being blessed by it.”

Lehman said most of the women going to the abortion clinic are from Missouri and Oklahoma.
Bonnie Toombs, the director of the Respect Life and Social Justice Office, said she prays that God will bless every sidewalk volunteer. “The response from the people of Pittsburg has been so amazing to witness, such passion lived out through this life-saving ministry!”