(LifeSiteNews) Editor’s Note: In October 2020, Will Goodman along with four other pro-life activists (Lauren Handy, Heather Idoni, Herb Geraghty, and John Hinshaw) participated in rescue action at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic (WSC), the abortion business run by Cesare Santangelo. Santangelo was featured in Live Action’s InHuman investigation during which he stated that if a child was born alive at his facility during an abortion, he and his staff “would not help it.” This facility is also where five aborted children who appeared to have been old enough to survive outside the womb were discovered in medical waste, raising questions about potential legal and serious ethical violations by WSC.
Goodman and the other pro-lifers were charged with conspiracy against rights and FACE Act violations and on August 29, 2023, each was found guilty on both charges. They are currently in jail awaiting their sentencing, which could be up to 11 years in prison.
Below is Will Goodman’s letter from jail:
I am blessed to have a narrow 2-inch-long window by which to see the blue sky. Deo gratias. It’s Labor Day weekend, and it seems I am right where God wants me to be, even if it’s not so much where I wanted to be.
In some ways a jail cell is like a womb in that it is a place of confinement, hope and waiting. You are in the dark regarding all that’s happening in the world. Far away from the action. But you are close to God despite the times of feeling alone. It can be a place of life and growth. It may sound strange, but in some ways I feel closer to my persecuted preborn sisters and brothers here than almost anywhere (save maybe for in a church during the Liturgy or inside a fully operational killing facility).
The jail retreat makes you feel invisible to the world. Helpless and absent. Separated. Muted. It makes me mourn the many tens of thousands of little ones who die alone. And helpless. And separated. Their tiny cries muted. Dying at abortion chambers where all humanity is utterly absent.
These heavy thoughts haunt me constantly here. I am heartbroken over how tragically alone God’s children are inside these killing facilities. 🙁 And yet, I am more convinced than ever for the need of rescue and this particular gift of self – which one offers to the perishing – as also a personal presence of peace and conscience to the parents at the last moment.
Rescue is a truthful witness of love, before love comes too late, with the hope that love will conquer selfishness and fear. It is also a witness of nonviolence in a place of awful violence. A witness to hope in the gallows of despair. Rescuers seek to join Christ the Divine Rescuer Who is the Light of Hope.
I suppose there’s a certain fittingness for rescuers to be incarcerated over Labor Day weekend. A witness of good against evil is our labor. And our small gift of loving reparation.
Editor’s Note: This letter was published at LifeSiteNews and is reprinted here with permission.
