What Changed Pro-Choicers into Pro-Lifers?
On the Facebook site called Secular Pro-Life, this question was asked, “How many of you used to be pro-choice? What changed your mind?” I am going to share some of the comments since they are powerful!
Luarissa: “I was pro-choice until I had an abortion. I’ve repented and been forgiven, so I no longer sit in shame or guilt. But that does not erase or minimize the tragedy of what I did. I am grateful to my forgiving Father. In his mercy, God used my baby’s murder to change everything about me. It fuels my desire to speak for those who cannot speak. Because of God’s mercy, my child’s death will not be in vain.”
Samantha: “I was ‘Pro-Choice-For-OTHER-People-But-Pro-Life-For-Myself.’ That is, until I was struggling with PPD after the birth of my son and someone on FB posted an actual clip of an abortion. I didn’t have ‘auto play’ disabled and I saw it. I dissolved into tears, looked at my son, and I couldn’t even condone it for other people anymore. No one should have the right to take anyone else’s life. Period.”
Beth: “I was. What changed my mind was realizing the reality of abortion (both the methods and the legal permissibility under Doe v. Bolton), and the inconsistency of claiming to care about the most vulnerable in our society while completely disregarding the unborn. Also, I think a more mature understanding of what feminism really ought to look/sound like. It should honor and promote the equality and value of women as well as that which is uniquely feminine – the capacity to bear and nurture new life – and insist that society do the same.”
Kristin: “I was pro-choice until a few years ago. A close pro-life family member was challenging my conscious with facts against abortion. I felt I had to strengthen my argument with facts, too, so I went on a mission to educate myself with as much unbiased information as I could find. That journey led me to the truth, and the truth led me to becoming pro-life. I watched ‘The Silent Scream’ and an interview with Dr. Levatino, and I was forever changed, and glad for it.”
Jenna: “I used to think abortion was okay in some instances. But the biggest reason I changed my beliefs about it is that it’s so shocking how many people just don’t believe this is a PERSON. And even more shocking how many people know that it is and just don’t care. I have three daughters (and one son) and I loved them from the minute I knew about them. I want them to value life.”
Lindsay: “I used to believe that it wasn’t my place to tell another woman what to do with her body, but I didn’t think abortion was good. At the end of my freshman year of high school an acquaintance told me she was pregnant and was going to have an abortion. I asked if she was sure, but when it seemed like she really didn’t want to keep the baby, I asked if she needed me to go with her or anything and to let me know how she was doing after the abortion. I supported her like a good friend supposedly should. She had another friend taking her, so I just went home and waited for her to call at some point.
“I didn’t hear from her all summer. The next school year, she wasn’t at school. Second semester, she finally came back. After a couple of weeks, I finally found the courage to go up to her and ask her what had happened. She pulled out a locket around her neck and showed me a picture of her son whom she had given birth to and placed for adoption. When I saw his face, I saw the person I had almost supported her in killing. I knew I couldn’t be ambivalent anymore and I knew even us young women were stronger than the voices of the pro-choice side gave us credit for because my schoolmate was an example of that strength.”
Jackie: “I’m liberal so being pro-choice came with the territory but I’m also a professor and I’ve been teaching Anatomy and Physiology since 2002. When I started teaching an advanced Human Physiology class in 2008, something huge shifted inside of me. I can’t teach about the wonders of development and ignore the wonders of development. I’m also inherently a tree-hugger and can’t handle it when trees and animals are harmed and the cognitive dissonance started breaking.”
Monique: “I was pro-choice just not for me. Then I had an unexpected pregnancy and went to Planned Parenthood to confirm. They pushed me to not tell anyone and have an abortion. The more I resisted, the more aggressive they got. I literally had to run out of the office. She’s seven now, I’m married to her dad and just thinking about the possibility of not having our little family is crushing. Abortion hurts women and most are coerced into it.”
Chris: “I was pro choice. I took the coward’s way out. The standard cop out; ‘I’m not a woman, it’s none of my business.’ By that logic, bank robbery is none of my business, rape is none of my business, child abuse is none of my business. homelessness is none of my business. The idea of self defense and or defense of another rests on the concept that I have agency to protect those who can’t protect themselves.”
Karen: “I was. I saw my child on ultrasound and realized she was a child. I expected to see a blob, not a baby sucking her thumb, at 20 weeks gestation. I knew then I’d been lied to and was furious.”
Heather: “I was rather uncommitted either way, just not a problem I had to consider. Until I miscarried at 5 weeks. That was a life. I felt real loss, real grief. And the pro abortion side tells me it’s just a clump of cells. It wasn’t. It mattered. It had meaning. I know that now.”
Natalie: “I was offered to terminate one of my twins for chromosomal defects that she could possibly overcome at 16 weeks. Didn’t make sense to me to kill her. Why not give her a chance? Why terminate because she was different? Was her life less valuable than her sisters because her quality of life would not be the same as her sisters? Did they assume I couldn’t handle a special needs child at 20 years old? Who were they to assume I wouldn’t give her the best quality of life? She was my daughter. I made her. I loved her and I hadn’t even met her. I miscarried my twins girls at 22 weeks and never felt so heartbroken in my whole life.”
Rhonda: “I was one that said I wouldn’t do it unless there was an extreme abnormality but then our first pregnancy ended up being a partial molar pregnancy. Our baby died at 15 weeks and I had to deliver him. Watching my husband hold our fully formed baby and confirm his gender at this early stage did it for me. Doctors tried to comfort me with the fact that if he had survived he would have had severe problems. But to me the pain and emptiness I was feeling was worse than anything else I could imagine. It’s been 20 years and I still grieve that loss. And for people to dismiss his humanity cuts right through me.”
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
Psalm 127:3
21 thoughts on “What Changed Pro-Choicers into Pro-Lifers?”
Wow, those are beautiful and powerful testimonies. Thank you for sharing!
Amen. My state is about to pass the heartbeat bill so excited :).
I started to lean pro-life when I heard the absolutely disgusting and selfish reasons why many pro-choice people defend abortion. Passing taking a life off as a medical procedure, and the idea that your convenience matters more than the LIFE of your child is appalling! Not to mention they don’t even like to consider it a separate entity… This is the product of utter entitlement and selfishness…
Wow! Wow! Wow! My heart just swells at hearing these stories of loss and life. My favorite one is probably the teenager who gave her baby up for adoption; what selflessness on her part!
After going through numerous miscarriages i look forward to seeing my children in heaven and find it despicable that people consider them just a mass of “tissue”.
I hear so many liberals saying how horrible the history of slavery and Jim Crowe is in the South. They seem to be completely blind to the fact that they are just as terrible. The reason slavery was so accepted for so long in the south is because the people lied to themselves and told themselves blacks weren’t as human as whites. This is the same exact lie Nazis used to get rid of “inferior” races and the exact same lie liberals use to get rid of unplanned babies. All of it is an egregious affront to humanity and the God who made us.
Growing up with 17 siblings made me recognize how evil abortion and contraception are.
If my parents had believed in either one, 15 of my siblings, at least, would not be alive.
Abortion is a criminal offense in my country. Children are the lifeblood of our young nation that has suffered many wars. So many that up to 65% of our population is younger than 18. So many orphans everywhere. Those who didn’t lose parents to war, lost them to AIDS. If a woman is suspected to have had an abortion, she’s fortunate to make it to the nearest police station for her own safety because sadly mob justice will often claim her life too before she has an opportunity to be brought to justice. American government aid to my country has been offered with strings attached: like mass indoctrination on contraception, compulsory immunization, acceptance of homosexuality and mass Pentecostalism and charismania but glory to God for the strength of the family units and the want feminism which have empowered our leaders to resist these evil influences. We remain a poor people cash wise but we are rich in family, children, the true faith of the Bible delivered to us by the godly missionaries of old and our women are not emasculating our men and ruling the roost.
I posted before and I know I will get censored…but….
IVF is just a mass experiment for a bigger project.
They are using IVF to help fertility challenged people for one reason…to see how the children fair when older.
But…once it’s ascertained that IVF kids can live to old age without severe health consequences…we are going to have a huge problem with parents selecting embryos based upon IQ.
And what are we going to do? If you have certain countries boosting the IQ of their population at the right-hand side of the bell curve….What are we going to do?
And that’s what I’m seeing abortion being used for amongst The Rich. We are in a low fertility, high-investment parenting phase…2 perfect children get all the resources of the parent. So abortion is culling the children with issues so the parents can have their 2 perfect kids. It’s eugenics.
Anyways…I know you don’t like me posting all this Lori…but this is food for thought amongst You and Ken and your Kids.
I think all of it is sh**** and I don’t like it…but it’s also important to understand what’s going on in the world.
I never thought abortion was acceptable, even at a young age. The older I got, the more it was cemented.
There is someone in my life that survived an abortion. The mother was in an affair with a married man and he pressured her into it. She went through the procedure and went home. Several days later, she felt odd and went to see her own doctor. He confirmed that she was still pregnant and that it was very unusual. She delivered a healthy baby that I have the privilege to know. And she is now staunchly pro-life. Another person in my life is a product of rape, but doesn’t know it. While that person is pro-choice, I wonder if that would still be true if they knew that their mom kept them because she was pro-life…..
I am pro-choice for other people (to a point) but pro-life for me. There are no circumstances in which I would personally have an abortion, but I acknowledge that there are a very few circumstances in which other women (or young girls who are the victims of rape and incest) may wish to have one, and these women deserve the dignity of a legal, safe abortion. But these circumstances are very few and far between, and the vast majority of abortions that are performed do not fit into this very narrow category.
I watched a video once, of an American pro-choice university student claiming that babies born alive as a result of botched abortions are not deserving of medical care, because they’re not babies. But she admitted that babies born prematurely to immigrants at the border were deserving of medical care, because they are babies. How does that even work? Either it’s a baby, or it isn’t.
Mother Dearest,
What country are you from, if you don’t mind sharing that info? -RMR
Did you know that miscarriages are often referred to by doctors as spontaneous abortions? It’s awful to hear that. I sadly have had 3 different types. There must be more education for doctors, and research into it. A cause was found for mine, which meant surgery to fix it. Now I have 2 adult children
Hi RMR,
Here’s an article about my country. The estimated percentage of the under 18s is slightly understated probably because doing a census is a Herculean undertaking given our poor infrastructure and revulsion at counting children (it’s a taboo). Note the negative tone when limited access to contraception is talked of????
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-youngest-populations-in-the-world.html
What happens to all these orphans in your country, Mother Dearest? Do they have access to food, shelter, love, medical care, education? I assume they do, but you didn’t say.
In my country, there are several charities (World Vision, Save the Children, CCF are the ones that come to mind) who are constantly advertising for funds, for us to sponsor children, to do the “40 hour famine” to raise money to send to your country, and others, to look after these children. More and more people in my country are refusing to donate to these charities, as there are so many children here in need of support, and because these charities take so many of the donations in “administration” – leaving only a very tiny portion of donated funds to go to those in need.
Reading that article you posted, I fear greatly for the children in your country in the future. It doesn’t sound like there is a lot of hope for them, with the population set to double and resources there already being strained.
Thankyou, Mother Dearest. I did notice the push for contraception in the article as if having children is at the root of all the problems. I love that family is so important to your country even though you have suffered much. Suffering causes us to cling to those things that are most precious… our faith and our families. I pray that the leaders of your country stay strong against the scourge of feminism, homosexuality, pentecostalism and charismania. There are still pockets of believers in the United States that do not believe in the things that you’ve listed, Praise the Lord.
Hi KAK,
The very intention of the article’s author was to get you to “fear greatly”. Rest assured that on the ground, there is plenty of hope for the future and an optimism that confounds many 1st world minds. We don’t have many orphanages in fact I can think of only one for infants and and another for under 12s. Both are run by local Christians. They account for roughly under 0.1% of the orphan population. The rest of the orphans are absorbed into extended families. Where there is no surviving family, neighbors and friends take them in and raise them.
You see, we are naturally poor as the world reckons wealth, we don’t know over consumerism or materialism because by God’s common grace we have next to nothing. This means that we are grateful for our daily bread, clothes on our backs and a simple roof over our heads. Yes we have high mother and infant mortality rates but we don’t lose nearly as many as America deliberately kills in abortion mills. Our education is improving (I was born, raised and educated back home yet I was able to compete for and win high end jobs in the 1st world) Our fastest growing export is our skilled labour because our economy cannot employ all of them and in turn, the fastest rising source of national revenue is repatriated funds from overseas. Our country is receptive to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ because there is generally no glut. It’s bittersweet that we are sending missionaries to 1st world countries who in centuries past brought the Gospel to us. They don’t receive the Word as joyously as we do.
Rest assured that if all foreign aid ceased (it was cut drastically anyway when our government upheld the criminality of homosexuality) our nation would go on because it is God who is in control. We cannot cease to have children for fear of the future because they are the true wealth of nations. Nations that cease to multiply or kill their offspring are chopping down the bough upon which they sit.
The Lord has established His throne in the heavens and His Sovereignty rules over all – Psalm 103:19
Amen!
These stories are amazing and show that knowledge and experience are powerful. I can’t help but wonder why the feminists in particular aren’t interested in protecting the voiceless unborn females ( as well as males of course)? You would think they would realize the hypocrisy of killing all those children includes little girls who would one day be great women. I understand the fear because I was pregnant at 18 and thought about abortion. But I heard God clearly tell me it was a baby and not a blob and I needed to keep it or give it up for adoption. I kept her and she is now 38 and a mother of a girl today. I made the nest choice even though I was afraid. I pray others will learn the truth about abortion and no longer throw away these precious gifts from the Lord.
Thank you for your reply Mother Dearest it’s great to hear a different perspective from what the media tells us.
In some ways, you are very blessed to not be afflicted by the rampant consumerism that is in western countries.
Rikki – yes I am aware of this terminology and like every other woman who has suffered miscarriage find it deeply upsetting.
Many women and especially those of us committed to submission of our ‘family planning’ to God will suffer miscarriage at sometime and to equate this tragedy with deliberate child murder is completely unacceptable and very cruel.
This was so difficult to read but so necessary to share, so thank you, Lori. Just last week a patron at my place of work brought this topic up to me. She was clearly pro-choice and I am pro-life, and when on the clock that’s a difficult line to toe. I tried to be as respectful as possible but insisted in my belief. She began jabbing her finger at me and asking what if it was ME that was raped by an uncle, that my baby wouldn’t have a decent life, etc. I responded that I used to work with people with developmental disabilities and I believe they have as much right to life as anyone else. An abortion DOESN’T stop the rape that happened. An abortion DOESN’T change the fact that a woman became pregnant. An abortion DOES end a life. It’s hard when faced with the animosity of those who disagree, but the Holy Spirit gives courage and peace of mind. I felt my silence would have made me complicit with her views – we need to speak for the innocent who have no voice.