Editor’s note: Red Rose Rescuer Laura Gies will not be in prison this Mother’s Day, but she wrote this reflection for Mother’s Day 2023 when she was in the Oakland County Jail. This week, Laura asked LifeSiteNews to publish her 2023 jailhouse essay in honor of her “friends in jail for this Mother’s Day, 2024 – especially fellow moms Heather Idoni, Joan Bell, and Paulette Harlow – all facing sentencing in their Federal FACE conviction case next week.”
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Many mothers receive roses on Mother’s Day. This year [2023] I am where no roses can be delivered. This Mother’s Day, I am a mother in jail for defending unborn children. For bringing roses to mothers inside a Detroit area abortion facility in April 2022 and peacefully kneeling between the knife and the children.
As a result of my peaceful actions in a Red Rose Rescue, I was convicted February 24, 2023, of misdemeanor “trespass” and “resisting an officer” by a jury which included 2 mothers. On March 30, I was sentenced along with my co-defendants by Judge Cynthia Arvant – also a mother – to 60 days in the Oakland County Jail.
READ: Jailed pro-lifer compares abortion to genocide and slave hunting in passionate prison letter
In a Red Rose Rescue, we seek to win the hearts of the mothers with our offers of help and with a rose. We do this because it is ultimately the mothers who will save their own babies – by turning away from the lethal decision of abortion.
How ironic it is that for my offer of roses at the abortion facility, I am now a mother on Mother’s Day behind bars completely unable to receive roses. In addition, where I am, at Oakland County Jail in Pontiac, Michigan, I am surrounded by mothers who also are not receiving roses on Mother’s Day.
I have mentioned the other mothers on this journey of recent weeks and months who have been a part of landing me in jail – members of the jury, the judge, and all the pregnant mothers we encounter in Red Rose Rescues – because it is a confusing epoch of motherhood in which we live. Many women who are mothers are involved in the upholding of abortion as a so-called “right” – which is a betrayal of all women and thus of all mothers.
On Mother’s Day, as I reflect on being behind bars and unable to see my children, unable to be treated extra-special for being a mom, I am surrounded by many other mothers with me in our cellblock, who are also missing their children very much. Many have shared their sorrow over abortions as well.
The toll of abortion against motherhood is heavy.
READ: Want to send letters of solidarity to jailed pro-life heroes? Here’s how
Here we are! Women who are mothers, divided over whether our motherhood is defined by life in the womb or by the so-called “right to choose.” We are living on this razor’s edge of the truth – that life in the womb is a joy to women, as this life defines us as mothers.
And yet for the sake of so-called “freedom,” our culture has screamed that abortion is what defines us women, exacerbating the confusion that women can’t be “equal” unless we can randomly destroy the fruit of our womb. This inversion of truth, this lie of the past 100 years that abortion is good has done so much harm, caused so much untold hidden grief, and pitted confused women against each other.
As for me, I am here to say with my body, my choice, my motherhood on this Mother’s Day in jail, that the lie of abortion won’t run through me. I have given up my freedom for a time (I will be released May 18 [2023]), being in this jail, to say this: Abortion kills living children and wounds human mothers!
While writing this, I decided to do something for my cellmates missing this Mother’s Day: I can draw roses! And I have a pad of drawing paper! I am giving all 60 of my cellmates a rose on a jail-made card to affirm their dignity as women and mothers! One small gesture at a time can turn hearts towards truth.
Is there something you can do in our pro-abortion culture to stand against the lie that abortion is a so-called “right”?
In honor of myself missing Mother’s Day roses, I invite everyone to consider bringing roses to abortion centers and lovingly offer them to women.
With a mother’s love,
Laura
May 10, 2023
P.S. This is the Mother’s Day card I wrote and drew for each of my 60 fellow women inmates last year. It has a beautiful quote from Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty about motherhood:
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