Ed Harpring still remembers the moment he heard the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. On that day, June 24, 2022, Harpring was on the sidewalk outside the EMW Women’s Surgical Center, a facility that offered abortions in Louisville from 1981 until 2022.
He was there serving as a “sidewalk counselor,” someone who would speak to women heading to the center on West Market Street about alternatives to abortion and direct them to local support services.
For Harpring — who spent the past four decades on that Market Street sidewalk — the news brought relief, he said in a recent interview.
“It was especially moving” to be at the facility when the decision was publicized, he said, noting that word came from someone on the sidewalk who was there to pray.
The decision was the answer to a decades-long prayer for Harpring, who began ministering outside the center two or three years after it opened, he said.
“I was down there for close to 40 years or more. After being there for so long, you get to a point where” an end to abortion “might not be something in my lifetime, but I’m going to keep at it,” he said. “It’s not something I really wanted to do, but I could do it. It was always difficult, but you just felt like, ‘This is where the Lord has called me.’ ”
Looking back on his memories on the sidewalk, Harpring said he encountered thousands of women, and dozens that he counseled ended up choosing to have their baby.
The women he met often were “distressed” and weren’t happy to be at the surgical center, he said. Many women he encountered felt like abortion was “the only answer,” he said.
He recalled one cold day when, in prayer on his drive to the center, he said, “ ‘Lord, I don’t want to be there today.’ ”
When he arrived, he was told that a woman had stopped by the day before looking for him. The woman turned out to be a distressed mother he had counseled about alternatives a few months earlier.
She wanted to show him her son and to tell him that she made his middle name Edward in his honor, Hapring said.
“I didn’t want to be there, and then that happened. That makes you realize it is worthwhile. It is a life,” he said.
The center closed in June of 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The court turned abortion law over to the states and, in Kentucky, the move triggered a state law that effectively bans abortion in the state.
Soon, the site of the surgical center will no longer look familiar, even to the man who spent three days a week on its sidewalk. The site was purchased by a real estate firm that has applied for a demolition permit, according to local media reports.
While rejoicing in the success of the pro-life cause, there’s more to do to help women in a crisis pregnancy, said Harpring, who served as the coordinator of pro-life ministries for the Archdiocese of Louisville for seven years before his retirement in 2021.
“It’s not over, and that’s why things like 40 Days for Life and Helpers of God’s Precious Infants are still going on,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of young pro-life people, but they aren’t acting on it.”
Harpring suggests that interested individuals get involved with pregnancy resource centers and maternity homes, where one can “do something now to help people in these situations.”
“Another powerful way to get involved” is through a Walking with Moms in Need parish group, he said. “They get a client who has chosen life, but the way is hard. Women at these parishes adopt these mothers, become their friend, take them to lunch, check in on them.”
Those interested in local pro-life opportunities should contact Stuart Hamilton, the archdiocesan pro-life event coordinator, at shamilton@archlou.org.
