UPDATE 5/26, 8:20a: E! Online has posted a fair story on Brad’s pro-life stance. Add your comment! This is an article we can anticipate many who consider themselves “pro-choice” will read. At present comments are running 90% pro-life, a beautiful thing.

5/25:4:41p: Since yesterday liberal websites have been aghast at the news former Lyte Funky Ones boy band member Brad Fischetti (on the far right in photo) is now a pro-life activist.

LFO was a pop/hip hop group that had several hits between 1998-2002, the most prominent of which were “Summer Girls,” “Girl on TV,” and “Every Other Time.”

In 2009 Fischetti announced the band’s break-up on YouTube.

And then something obviously happened in Fischetti’s life to bring him to where he is today, as chronicled by Buzz Feed’s lament…

Fischetti has indeed been doing some pro-life sidewalk counseling at the Orlando Women’s Center abortion clinic in Florida. Here is sampling of Fischetti’s tweets that is so disturbing the pro-abortion community…

After I read about Fischetti and perused his tweets last night, I started researching him, because honestly, I’d never heard of LFO.

What I learned made me even more curious. Fischetti is now the Director of Contemporary Music and New Media at the Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Celebration, FL. Here’s his hip hop arrangement of “Awesome God,” pretty cool.

Thanks to God for His amazing favors, I indeed got to speak with Brad a little while ago, with the help of pro-life activist John Barros. Brad has an amazing testimony, which I’m just going to let him share it with you….

Brad Fischetti’s pro-life testimony

I look back now and regret having such a serious platform but not using  it.

With LFO I was out there and recognizable, selling millions of records and playing in front of tens of thousands of people, but I didn’t have strong convictions about anything. I wasn’t able to stand up about anything that was really important to me.

Don’t get me wrong, when we were on top of the world I was very spiritual. I was baptized Catholic, and I grew up Catholic. I carried my Bible around with me on the road and lead prayers before concerts. As a group we were very spiritual.  But over the course of time, witnessing the horrible things that occur in this world, I could tell I was slowly losing my faith.

Then one day sometime in 2000-2001 I heard a terrible story about young boys getting kidnapped near their house by devil worshipers. Their genitals were mutilated and they were murdered. I decided right then that if there was a God, He wouldn’t let that happen. 

And so I stopped believing.  I stopped praying, stopped reading my Bible, and just lived without faith. I didn’t work against those who believed, I just didn’t.  And my life seemingly continued to go well.  (Later I discovered that “things of this world” can never satisfy the human heart.)

I lived without a faith for two or three years.

U-Turn

Then one summer I decided to take a handful of my bands from my record label, 111 Records, on a tour. We rented a big RV and hooked a trailer to the back of it. One of the girls touring with us had cancer. It was a slow moving cancer and didn’t effect her daily life too much.

But one night she starting having difficulty breathing and couldn’t feel her hands, and I rushed her to the closest ER. We were in a little town in upstate New York in the middle of nowhere, and the hospital was very small. The ER doctor wanted to send the surgeons down to operate to remove the tumor then and there, but I said no way.  I told the doctor I would drive her to her cancer hospital, which was about seven hours away.   The doc gave her weak pain killers and sent us on our way.

I started driving the RV. It was late at night, raining, and we were in the mountains with slick roads and fog all around us. I felt like I was already dead, already gone.

I took a wrong turn trying to find a gas station.  I drove miles and miles down this two-lane road looking for a place to make a u-turn.  Finally I happened upon a state police station.  So I pulled in and attempted the u-turn, when suddenly the RV got stuck on a flat boulder.  So here I was at three o’clock in the morning, in the pouring rain, stuck, with this girl in the back of the RV in pain.

And so I stepped out into the rain.  I looked up to the sky.   And I prayed. It was the first time in years.  And I said, “God, if you can get me out of this I will never again turn my back to You.”

And yes, I got the RV unstuck and got the girl to her hospital. This was a pivotal moment in my conversion. But it didn’t happen overnight.

Grains of rice

Before my conversion I didn’t like abortion, but it didn’t affect me. It was just grains of rice being aborted, I thought.

But my faith became supremely important to me, and through that the abortion picture became clearer.

And when you learn, when you get to know what really happens in an abortion, it becomes atrocious.

I didn’t ask for this seemingly newfound platform.  And it’s hard to understand why people care so much about what I have to say when there are so many others who have fought longer and harder for the pro-life movement than I.  But if God is calling me to use what little platform I have left to help educate people, to help people understand what abortion really is, then – “Here I am Lord.  I come to do Your will.”

Many people don’t really know what happens in an abortion. Rarely is a girl only a couple of weeks pregnant.  Most women don’t find out they are pregnant until they are four or five or six weeks along.  And then they spend time trying to decide if they want an abortion, and by the time they get to the clinic, they are 12 or 13 or 14 weeks pregnant.  Their babies have fingers and toes. 

And at the clinic in Orlando I’ve seen girls 24 weeks pregnant have abortions done.  And I’ve seen girls who are up to 30 weeks pregnant referred to the clinic owner’s secret abortion facility in the DC area, where he will abort babies well past 30 weeks of pregnancy!

The “pro-choice” concept is ludicrous. It makes no sense to me. “Pro-choice” is the choice to have sex or not to have sex.  And, yes, I do realize that a small number of abortions are performed on women who have been raped or are victims of incest.  And those crimes are as despicable as abortion. 

But abortion is not the answer.  We should not punish the baby for the sins of the father.  And further, in a situation like that, the woman has already been violated enough.  An abortion will just serve to violate her further. 

Bodies

I saw the “Bodies” exhibit in Las Vegas. They had a whole display on fetal development, and it was astounding how developed a baby is early in pregnancy. That’s when it dawned on me that abortion is not right under any circumstances. I believe a baby is a gift from God, and abortion is an atrocious sin and not acceptable under any circumstances.

I further believe when abortion was legalized it was never intended to be what it has become: Men who call themselves doctors go inside a woman’s womb and tear babies apart – or deliver them dead – or sometimes alive. It’s disgusting.

I really don’t care what people think of my stance against abortion. I may lose family and friends. But I am obligated to speak the truth. If I have a platform of 500 or 5,000, my job is to speak the truth. We have God on our side, and eventually abortion will be a sad chapter in our history. 

Just because abortion is legal does not make it right.  There was a time in this country when denying a woman the right to vote was legal.  Was it right?  No.  There was a time in this country when slavery was legal.  Was it right?  No way.  To quote the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “Legality does not equal morality.”

Although I regret not having stronger convictions when I had a platform, I wouldn’t change anything.  I am content with who I am and where I am.

I haven’t read what the other side is saying about me right now, but I don’t care and I don’t judge them or anyone.  I only want people to know the truth, and I only want to help.  And I’m content doing so in my little bubble in Orlando, Florida.  But if God calls me to take a larger role, I will do His will.

I’m a man, I’m a father, I’m a Christian, I’m a human, and I’m pro-life.

Jill again

Pro-life community, please join me in praying for our new dear friend Brad as he walks down this unknown path of speaking out against abortion to pro-abortion peers and fans.  It won’t be easy for him. But we are grateful for his voice, and more than us, so are the babies.