On Sunday, February 11, 2007,  the unborn babies  lost John Marcus, a great Catholic leader in the Right-to-Life Movement who served God faithfully in  the Washington, D.C. and Maryland community.  John died peacefully  after suffering for several years from kidney and heart failure and from other life threatening illnesses.  John now joins his lovely wife, Wendy, in Heaven.  His wife, another outstanding Catholic, had recently died from cancer.  John was from Prince Georges County, Maryland.

When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the killing of the unborn in 1973, John started attending the annual March For Life (held each January 22nd) as well as served as a marshal at the annual march in Annapolis), until his failing health prevented him.  He regularly wrote letters to (and met with) his elected officials to voice his concerns for the unborn.  Every year when the March for Life occurred on January 22nd, John would first spend his morning by going out to a local abortuary at 8 a.m. to try to save lives doing sidewalk counseling and then after he had finished with the counseling at 11 a.m. he would attend the March For Life which started near the White House and ended at the U.S. Capitol.  Afterwards he would try to lobby the stubborn pro-choice senators and congressman to obey God and vote prolife in all the bills that effected the lives of unborn children around the world.

In 1985 John became involved with what is known as "sidewalk counseling" outside the premises of abortuaries in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area.  He counseled outside of many of the 30 or more abortion clinics throughout the Washington, D.C. area.  His main focus was the Hillcrest Abortuary in Southeast, Washington, D.C. shown in the photograph above.  He began his work there in 1985 and faithfully showed up every Saturday morning at this Abortion Mill up until January of 2004 when he became gravely ill and was hospitalized.  This Abortion Mill was considered to be the largest abortion mill in the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. area and the mill was thought to have put to death 5,000  or more babies each year.  Shortly after his departure from his sidewalk counseling work in January of 2004, both Hillcrest Abortuaries in Southeast and Northwest Washington, D.C. mysteriously closed permanently.  God heard and answered the prayers of John and his prolife colleagues and shut down both these killing centers where thousands of unborn Washingtonians and Marylanders had lost their lives.  After John's health improved, he resumed sidewalk counseling—this time at an abortuary near Greenbelt.

During the week John worked very hard as a professional computer programmer and  on Saturday, instead of relaxing at home, he  would get up very early and drive approximately one hour  to the Hillcrest abortuary.  He would routinely arrive at 8 a.m. every Saturday morning at the Hillcrest killing center to pray the rosary and to try to intercept the pregnant women who were going in for scheduled abortions.  Miraculously John got the attention of many women with his quick loving smile and his kinds words.  John would often say to the women, "What can we do to help?" or "You have a baby, don't let them take that baby from you."  Thousands of  women responded to his love and decided not to have their abortions.  John's efforts outside this deadly Killing Center saved the lives of hundreds of unborn babies. John would faithfully recite 15 decades of the rosary along with many other prayers while he was doing his counseling work on the sidewalk.  He knew that with God and the Virgin Mary's intervention many babies could be saved.  He did sidewalk counseling from 1985 through 2007.

In his counseling efforts John would routinely walk onto the private property of the abortion center to try to reach the women with prolife literature and with his plea, "please do not hurt your baby."  The abortion mill employees would see John on the private property and call the police.  The police came often and threatened month after month and year after year to arrest John if he kept going on the property, but John never gave into their ungodly laws and thought it was more prudent to obey God and save a life, rather than yielding to the hostile police.  Miraculously, the police never arrested John for his Godly trespass.

On many occasions, Mr. Marcus would be confronted by the hostile boyfriends of the women seeking abortions.  He was both physically and verbally attacked by these boyfriends.  Several times he was thrown to the ground by boyfriends and by the opposition pro-abortion death-scorts who routinely harassed and intimidated Christians who were trying to save lives.  Fellow pro-lifers saw John cursed,  kicked, punched and  spat upon throughout this twenty years of counseling efforts. Although John was small in stature, he would never back down from any of the men who threatened him saying to his friends, "I just don't care, a baby's life is at stake."    On one occasion he was threatened at gunpoint by a small gang of hoodlums who were trying to intimidate his pro-life efforts.  He was not an intimidating person, nor was he intimidated by others.

Because the sin of abortion is a mortal sin, the sin of murder,  the women who turned from this sin because of John's efforts were turned away from the fires of Hell. Only God knows how many souls John saved by his saintly efforts.  On many occasions the women would come down and talk to John about their pregnancy.  John offered each one of the women a ride to the nearby Forestville Pregnancy Center where they would receive Godly counseling about giving life to their expected child. Because of his genuine love, many of the women trusted John and went with him in his car to the Pregnancy Center for counseling.  The pregnant women saw the love of Jesus in John and trusted him.

During his 20 years of work doing sidewalk counseling, John and fellow Christians passed out thousands of pro-life leaflets to people entering the abortuary and to people who would stop their cars and ask for the leaflets.  Pro-life signs posted in the public-right-of-way next to the street  bore a constant witness to the ten of thousands of people  that drove  by the abortuary which was located on Pennsylvania Avenue, a major thoroughfare into the heart of Washington, D.C.  It was reported on a couple of occasions from people who lived in the area that the pro-life pamphlets were showing up at work places throughout Washington, D.C..  Only God knows what influence this pro-life advertising had in preventing abortions and in turning residents of Maryland and Washington, D.C. away from sexual immorality.

John was for many years a member of the Knights of Columbus of the Pope Pius X Council in Prince Georges County, Maryland.  He was able to get many of the Knights to join him in doing his prolife work in front of the Hillcrest Abortuary.  When he died he was the current Grand Knight of this Council, a position which he had held for years.  He and his fellow knights contributed their time, money and other material resources to help  the Forestville Pregnancy Aid  Center.   He would begin his meetings with the words "Do whatever He tells you"...the words Mary spoke to the servants at Cana.  He exhorted fellow Knights to listen to Jesus' voice and "do whatever He tells you".