Aisha Taylor set a steady course for her life. After graduate school in Michigan, the young woman moved to Detroit and worked in corporate finance. She decided to leave that job and become an entrepreneur. Then an unexpected pregnancy impacted her world and changed the course of her life.
Her boyfriend pushed her to abort.
“He said either have an abortion or he's leaving,” Aisha recalled.
She was terrified of what it might mean for her finances, having just left a corporate to become a full-time entrepreneur.
“And so, I'm like, ‘Okay, so what does this mean for my finances. what does this mean for my healthcare, and what does it mean for my business?” Aisha said. “I was following my dreams, so I was afraid that I would have to give up my dreams. It was a lot to deal with.”
From uncertainty to life
After receiving an ultrasound, Aisha learned she was about 10 weeks pregnant with twins. The father of her unborn babies continued to pressure for abortion. She was back and forth about what to do, she said, and called an abortion provider, but interestingly, no one answered the phone.
“I ended up going to church that day for Bible study,” Aisha said. “The pastor was teaching on the topic of storms, and he said, ‘Never make a permanent decision based upon temporary circumstances.’”
“At that point I knew that an abortion was permanent and what I was going through - the fears about my finances, the fears about their dad walking out, the fears about what people would say about me, and not knowing what everything would mean for my future and for my kids’ future – I knew all of that was temporary,” Aisha explained.
“What I needed to do was make a decision for life and let the Lord take care of everything else,” told Pregnancy Help News.
Aisha learned about a pregnancy resource center in the area where she lived, a place where she could receive help with materials and take parenting classes if she chose life. She made an appointment at the center, and she is grateful to have learned of such a place.
Her experience includes testament to the availability of pregnancy help organizations – being there for women, listening to their fears and meeting their needs.
“It was amazing to have someone listen to me because I was in the middle of everything with [the babies’] dad, making this decision and really trying to stand firm to choose life,” Aisha said.
“One time I was having a really hard day,” she recalled. “He’d gotten verbally abusive and started talking negative about me, about the babies. And I just picked up the phone. I’m like, ‘I know they’re closed, but I'm just going to call anyway.’”
“I thought I’d just get a voicemail – but someone answered!” Aisha exclaimed. “They stayed on the phone with me 35 minutes.”
That compassion and care helped Aisha stand firm and choose life for her babies.
“I'm grateful for them,” she said.
The twins’ father left, and Aisha’s parents encouraged her to move back home to Ohio. She said they were and continue to be supportive of her.
Her babies were born nearly eight years ago, and Aisha’s dream of becoming an entrepreneur came to fruition.
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Restoration realized
For Aisha, life has come full circle since that unplanned pregnancy more than eight years ago, and she sees beauty from what many claim are ashes.
“The Bible says God restores the years the locusts have eaten,” she said. “I'm grateful that they [the pregnancy center staff) were there for me during the time when I was lost.”
It felt at the time like her world was falling apart, that everything she knew was collapsing in front of her. But then she sought out pregnancy help.
“They helped me to not make the biggest mistake of my life,” Aisha said. “And I've told them, ‘I can't give back what you've done for me but what I can do is pay it forward.’”
She describes her life during the past eight-plus years as “a beautiful restoration.”
“I was someone who was radically pro-choice, and I remember being taught that people who are pro-life hated women,” she recalled. “I was naive enough to believe that. It wasn't until I was in my 30s, pregnant unexpectedly and going through all that stuff, that I realized what I had been taught wasn’t true.”
The falsehoods continue, she said, especially after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case.
“Hearing all the media’s justification for why women need abortion, it was so triggering,” said Aisha. “Because it reminded me of everything that my twins’ dad told me, literally everything,”
“But instead of one person being told that, it's all women who are unexpectedly pregnant being told their lives will fail if they go through a pregnancy, that their kids will fail if they go through this pregnancy,” she continued. “That's a lie. That's what he told me, and it was a lie to convince me to abort my kids. It’s fired me up in such a good way.”
A dream, a book, and a Christian reborn
Although her personal plans may have been delayed, her desire to become an entrepreneur came to pass with added bonuses – a book and a mission.
Aisha now teaches personal finance workshops; she has a blog and a YouTube channel.
“My focus is single moms,” she said.
Aisha wanted to give back for the help she received, so brought her program to pregnancy centers, teaching budgeting and personal finance to other single moms. She has also served on a pregnancy center board and is now training to become a part-time advocate for another center in the Cleveland area. Aisha expects to begin seeing clients in January.
She’s also written a book based on her experiences. Navigating the Impossible: A Survival Guide for Single Moms from Pregnancy through the First Year of Motherhood published in August.
“God had me write this book about everything I learned from pregnancy through the first year of motherhood,” Aisha said. “That process to choose life, and what that looked like and how it was,” Aisha said.
“It's not easy to not know what the future holds,” she said. “It's not easy to watch somebody walk out of your life and disparage you in the process. It's not easy to have friends laugh and talk about you behind your back because you're pregnant out of wedlock.”
“None of that is easy,” said Aisha. “But it was easy because I knew that my kids deserved to live, and then I ended up writing a book about it.”
Although she knew about God as a child and through her young adult years, Aisha decided to rededicate her life to Christ in 2011. In addition to all the other happenings in her life, she teaches online Bible studies.
Aisha considers it her calling to reach out to women to give them hope and empower them to believe in themselves, to be able to choose life.
“Women have to know that they're being lied to,” Aisha said. “They have to know that there is hope because they're only being told that there is no hope. It gave me such a purpose, to give them hope that they can make it, and that God has a purpose and plan for them, and He has a purpose and plan for their babies.”
