A rescue is the first step in repairing and restoring the lost relationships abortion brings about. It starts with breaking down the depersonalization of the preborn. Sidewalk counselors remind the mother of the child within her, a child everyone else has told her is not there. Next are the rescuers, who represent the child and his or her helplessness and frailty. Rescuers identify with the preborn by being passive and helpless. And finally, if the mother decides to keep her child, her relations to others are slowly repaired. Rescue is just that: intervention to save lives. No protesting here. Just as you would not protest the fact that a child is being killed and a mother exploited.

How much does a human being cost? This is the question posed to those of us who claim to be defenders of human life. How much are we willing to pay for the protection of and defense of the children? rescuing, in some form or other, is the bottom line for the pro-life movement. It means we really do believe our own rhetoric. It says we really do intend to love the unloved and care for the abandoned.

When we rescue, we stand in the gap between the preborn and the executioner as Christ stands, offering the path of life. The act of rescuing is an act of self-abandonment. we offer up whatever consequences we will face for the preborn and for all souls. we abandon our self-centeredness and become more like our preborn neighbors -- helpless and defenseless. Identifying with the unborn child models Christ's identification with man. "The closer we are to the preborn children," says Joan Andrews Bell, who spent over two years in jail for having rescued, "the more faithful we are, then the more identically aligned we become with them. The rougher it gets for us the more we can rejoice that we are succeeding; no longer are we being treated so much as the privileged born, but the discriminated against preborn. We must become aligned with them completely and totally, or else the double standard separating the preborn from the rest of humanity will never be eliminated. I don't want to be treated any differently than my brother, my sister. You reject them, you reject me."