WILLIAMSPORT — Wearing a button stating “I Regret Lost Fatherhood,” Andy Haines said he and his wife, Jaime, have both experienced the effect abortion can have on a person’s life.

“We ourselves are both post-abortive,” Haines said as the kickoff rally for 40 Days For Life was getting under way Tuesday night at Faith Christian Fellowship near Williamsport. He said he was involved in a relationship that resulted in an abortion years ago and that Jaime had two.

The impact of abortion comes back to him from time to time, Haines said, including at a recent meeting with a youth group.

“In that class of teens, I should have a 15-year-old daughter,” Haines told those assembled at Faith Christian. The Falling Waters, W.Va., couple now runs New Creation Refuge, helping others with similar experiences through prayer, Bible study and counseling, he said.

From today through March 28, participants will use prayer and fasting, community outreach and peaceful vigils to spread their anti-abortion message, Haines said.

That will include vigils at Hagerstown Reproductive Health Services, 160 W. Washington St., Jaime Haines said. The clinic has been the target of anti-abortion demonstrations in the past.

“If we don’t care for the unborn, then we don’t really care for the lost soul,” Faith Christian Pastor Dave Vance said. “As that great theologian Dr. Seuss said, ‘A person is a person, no matter how small.’”

Forty Days For Life began in Texas in 2004 and this year 165 cities in the United States, Australia, Canada and Northern Ireland are participating, Haines said. This is the first year the event will be held in Hagerstown, he said.

Since 2004, 40 Days For Life has convinced more than 2,000 women to forgo abortions, as well as convincing 26 staff members at clinics providing abortion to quit their jobs, said Jessica Klick, an organizer who also described herself as post-abortive. Five clinics have closed as a result of the movement, she said.

“Our goal is to touch one life ... to reach out and love,” Jaime Haines said. “We don’t want any condemnation or guilt laid down there” against women seeking abortions or abortion counseling, or clinic staff, she said.

“Do not respond to hecklers at all,” she said. The organizers stressed the vigil must be peaceful, with participants signing a “peace statement” that they are to keep with them while they are taking part in the vigil.