Over the years that I've served at a pregnancy center, I've always found it interesting to hear why people choose pro-life work to give their time to.
With pro-life ministry mostly unpaid or extremely low pay at best, there's a decision involved in preferring this ministry over dozens of others to get involved with.
Sometimes people share what prompted them to seek out a pregnancy center or respond to an appeal for help at one right up front. Other times I've found their motivation comes out gradually, in bits and pieces shared over the sorting of donated baby clothes.
Others, I've found, are volunteers at pregnancy centers for years without ever sharing their own experience with abortion.
That was the case with one man who had been coming in on Saturdays to help out.
He would do whatever was needed …. carry a crib or pack & play to a mom's car, answer the phone, get a bin of clothes down from a high shelf, dust off a highchair someone needed. He was also one of our "pick up" guys, who drive around in their van or truck and pick up larger donations from people's homes.
Our center was open on Saturdays because the Planned Parenthood a few doors down is open on Saturdays. It was always a busy day, between appointments, walk-ins (who could've been sent to us by the folks praying outside Planned Parenthood), people bringing donations, etc.
So, although I'd spent many a Saturday morning with Tim*, I hadn't really spoken to him much.
Then one day whipping around the grocery store I happened to run into Tim in the same aisle. He asked how that client who had come in two weeks ago was; had she gone for the ultrasound, and would she be keeping her child?
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I told him that sadly, she hadn't shown up for the ultrasound we'd scheduled for her, which of course wasn't a good sign. Then she didn't return either a call or a text I'd sent her.
It didn't sound good, I told him.
Tears came to his eyes.
I wasn't expecting it, but Tim was crying, and he said, "Oh she just doesn't know. She just has no idea how much she'll regret it later."
He went on to tell me he and his wife made the decision to abort their second child almost 40 years ago, and it remains the most regretted choice of his life.
They weren't earning much money at the time and had a 10-month-old baby. They felt they needed a few years before having another child, and figured they'd, "just pass on this one and just have another one later."
That's how Tim and his wife thought back then, and without being shown their baby's ultrasound at the Planned Parenthood they went to, they were genuinely unaware of their baby's heartbeat, tiny fingers and toes, and brainwaves.
He said the abortion "choice" was presented as "helping" them, an absurdity he now realizes and works to help bring to light.
They did go on to have two other children, but Tim said, "Not a day goes by that we don't think about that child we could've had, and that sibling our kids would have today."
Editor’s note: Tim’s name has been changed. Help is always available through Option Line. Call or text 1-800-712-4357. Heartbeat International has abortion recovery resources HERE. Heartbeat International manages Option Line and Pregnancy Help News.
