One of the scariest things for a teenager to face is an unexpected crisis pregnancy. And that’s exactly the situation Miranda found herself in. She wasn’t ready to be a mother. Her boyfriend was pressuring her to have an abortion. But thanks to one simple action from a nurse at a pregnancy resource center, Miranda’s preborn baby was saved.
“I bought a pregnancy test. I took it and it said positive, and I was shocked,” Miranda recalled. “I was like, ‘how could this happen to me?'” So Miranda contacted her boyfriend to let him know that she was pregnant. “And he said, ‘Okay, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it’,” she continued. He wanted her to have an abortion.
At first, Miranda didn’t question his decision. “I was finishing school, you know, I had my life ahead of me,” she explained. “How was I going to have a baby? How was I going to get pregnant and how was I going to explain it to my parents?” Miranda went to one of her friends for support, who went online to find resources for her. She found a pregnancy center, and that was where Miranda went. That visit would be what saved her baby’s life.
“The last thing that they did during the visit was give me an ultrasound,” she said. “And I could see on the screen next to me that there was this little… it looked like a bean. I called it a jumping bean. And it was just moving around, and it was jumping up and down. And so right at that moment, I changed my mind and I saw — I said, this is a true, living thing. It’s not just a clump of cells that’s not moving and not living. There is something living and growing and moving inside me already.”
Miranda eventually told her mother, who recommended that she go to Focus on the Family. “I started becoming more open to adoption,” Miranda said. “I knew that I needed another option, because parenting wasn’t going to be the best option for me.” So she met a couple, and began considering an open adoption plan with them. Nine months later, she gave birth to Hope, a healthy baby girl, who now attends elementary school and is being raised by Susan and Alex, the couple Miranda chose to be Hope’s parents.
“She encapsulates life,” Alex said of Hope. “And so it’s interesting that she is the daughter who has come from this situation where, you know, the choice of death was an option. She absolutely personifies life and energy and vitality.
The ultrasound that the nurse gave Miranda saved Hope, and her story shows why ultrasounds are so important. Abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood frequently lie to women about fetal development, calling preborn babies clumps of cells or bits of tissue. Women aren’t told that their babies are alive, much less shown photos of their preborn babies, because doing so would mean less abortions. But at the very least, women deserve to know the truth.
Fortunately, women facing unplanned pregnancies have options. There are resources available to help if they are being pressured into an abortion, while pregnancy resource centers can help provide ultrasounds, prenatal vitamins, baby supplies, and emotional support. Organizations like Save the Storks, Stand Up Girl, Option Line, and Pregnancy Line can also help connect women with live, trained counselors, who can help them find local resources, including medical care. They don’t have to feel trapped into a situation that offers them nothing better than violence and death.
