CV NEWS FEED // An author and friend recently wrote a heartfelt tribute to “pro-life hero” John Barros, who passed away last week, about his unwavering commitment to saving children through a daily ministry outside of a notorious Florida abortion clinic.
Barros passed away on February 15, 2024. Five days later, in the online publication First Things, Jonathan Van Maren wrote a tribute to Barros’ legacy titled “Farewell to a Pro-Life Hero.”
Barros was a volunteer sidewalk counselor for almost two decades outside of an abortion clinic called the Orlando Women’s Center. Van Maren wrote that Barros spent so much time on this sidewalk in front of the clinic that the very concrete “was worn away” by his standing there, “preaching and calling out to the women going inside.”
Van Maren wrote that Barros “showed up day after day, in all weather, despite his own health struggles. Visiting the clinic one day, I saw small indents next to the worn patches on the sidewalk—I later learned they were from John’s crutches, which he required ever since getting back surgery.”
During these almost-two decades outside the clinic, Van Maren wrote, about thirty women a month changed their minds on having an abortion because of Barros’ ministry. “It is impossible to know precisely how many babies were saved, but a safe estimate is well over 3,000,” Van Maren wrote:
When I attended his church one Sunday while on a pro-life tour of Florida campuses, I spotted him sitting near the front in a pew filled with young women, many of them cradling babies and lugging car seats. He had met them at the abortion clinic and invited them to St. Andrew’s Chapel. His church authorized him to offer the women whatever they needed, from rent money to diapers.
Barros became so involved in sidewalk counseling nearly twenty years ago at the invitation of a pastor, and after this “began going to the clinic regularly.”
Barros answered this call “despite a brutal series of health concerns—including two brain aneurysms, cancer, and back surgery,” Van Maren continued. “Sitting on a wall next to a place he would call ‘a house of madness,’ he prayed to God, asking him to take care of his family.”
Van Maren personally spent time with Barros during sidewalk counseling. “To spend the day with John on the sidewalk was to witness awful things,” Van Maren wrote, highlighting that the Orlando Women’s Center clinic performs late-term abortions.
Barros “called the sloping driveway leading to the clinic’s back parking lot ‘the Valley of Decision.’ Many girls stopped there to talk; many decided to turn around,” Van Maren wrote:
As each girl showed up, John started calling. Don’t do this. We can give you any help you need. Medical care. A place to stay. I’m here to help. If the boyfriend is the problem, I’ve driven girls to safe houses in Tennessee.
Some boyfriends showed up with their girlfriends, who shuffled toward the door, heads down. Guys, be a real man. Protect her! Angry men threatened John many times; some had guns. His faith in God rendered him fearless, and his confidence usually cowed them.
When he couldn’t speak with the mothers, Barros would have the volunteers and other counselors sing hymns – the sound of which changed at least one girl’s mind and saved at least one child from an abortion, Van Maren recalled.
“Isn’t it amazing what God will do if you just show up?” Barros had said to Van Maren. Barros faithfully went to that sidewalk every day, for years, around 7:30 a.m.
“Strangely, the clinic staff grew to love him, and would call out ‘Hi, John!’ as they headed in,” Van Maren wrote:
One Thanksgiving, they invited him in through the back door to share a meal with them. He used the opportunity to share the gospel; half of them quit the abortion business, forcing the shutdown of one clinic location.
Barros also “refused all credit” for the many children saved, and insisted that “only God could change the hearts of the women walking past.”
“I asked [Barros], once, how he’d felt called to the pro-life movement. ‘I wasn’t called to the pro-life movement,’ he replied. ‘God called me to forty feet of sidewalk,’” Van Maren recounted:
For nearly two decades, that is where he stayed, his feet wearing down the concrete, his words wearing away at thousands of hard hearts.
