What Being Pro-Life Means to Me

"I remember her like it was yesterday. We sat across from each other in a small room, she on the sofa and myself in a chair. It was about 6:00 p.m. when she walked in, an hour before the office closed for the day. It had been a long day. I was tired. At the time, I was in charge of coordinating the fundraising events for a small, crisis pregnancy center and the workload could be overwhelming. But this was the one night a week that I volunteered downstairs. It was my opportunity to remember why my fundraising efforts were important.

She had also just come from work. She was dressed in a professional pant-suit. I gave her the instructions for the pregnancy test, and once that was taken care of, she sat down and explained her situation to me.

She was in her early twenties. She had been dating someone pretty seriously for about six months. She was hoping they would get married. But she recently took a pregnancy test that showed a positive result. When she told her boyfriend, he told her to get rid of it. She explained to me that his family is really involved in his church. They go to a small, church from a conservative denomination called the CRC. “Have you heard of it?” she asked. I nodded my head.

He said that his family would freak out, that this would ruin his parents’ reputation in their church and community. He told her to go somewhere to “get it taken care of.” And so she sat before me, wanting to confirm that she was pregnant so that she could obtain information about how to get an abortion."

Read more from this blog by Shannon Jammal-Hollemans at Do Justice >