Maria Mayela Banks was 10 years old when she migrated from Mexico to Arizona where her father had found work. She tried desperately to assimilate into American culture while trying to shed her Mexican heritage. She couldn’t have known the dramatic turn her life would take as a young woman, putting her on a path that would lead to the inside of an abortion business.
Banks told Live Action News, “I couldn’t speak English at first and my parents didn’t want anyone to know where we came from, so I felt isolated. As I grew older, I started reading romance novels that depicted exciting sexual escapades and listening to what my classmates were saying so I could become like them. I just wanted to have fun, but I was so naive.”
When she was 16 years old, she babysat for a neighbor’s children. While there, she was exposed to pornography. “It was such a vulnerable time in my life and my innocence was being stolen,” Banks said.
After graduating from cosmetology school, she shortened her name to “May” and took a job two hours away from her parents’ home. She became involved with a young man stationed at a nearby military base. The night before he was to leave for an overseas assignment, the couple had sex one last time.
Banks said, “I learned that dating meant having sex, but I didn’t understand what I was doing. We weren’t in a serious relationship. I just fell for the feminist lies and believed everything I read in romance novels. I thought I was becoming who others wanted me to be.”
She never counted on becoming pregnant. On the advice of her roommate, Banks had gone to Planned Parenthood to get birth control pills, but when she began taking the pills, she experienced something she didn’t plan on.
“I kept throwing up, so I went back to Planned Parenthood,” Banks said. “It was then I found out I was expecting a child. I was so scared and knew my parents would be hurt. I would have to own up to the lifestyle I had been living.”
The woman at Planned Parenthood told her there was an ‘easy’ solution: she could terminate the pregnancy, and nobody would ever know.
Banks said, “I was very hesitant. I asked if the procedure would hurt and if it was legal, and the woman told me I could pay extra to be sedated and assured me it was legal. As I wavered in my decision, she got frustrated with me.”
Pressured to comply, Banks made the abortion appointment, yet failed to show up. She says that’s when the woman from Planned Parenthood called her to ensure she rescheduled.
“But I had to get money for the sedation,” Banks said. “A guy I worked with took pity on me. He drove me to the appointment and his mother provided the money I needed.”
She signed a paper she didn’t read and was given the sedative. She remembers “blanking out” — but imagined that she heard her baby screaming at some point.
“It felt as if I was bound to a chair sitting in a dark room. The mother in me kicked in and I screamed for them to stop but didn’t know if they could hear me,” Banks said. “I felt helpless to keep my baby from being torn apart inside of me. I was experiencing the horror of abortion.”
As she waited for her friend to pick her up afterward, she cried tears of sorrow. She was bleeding so heavily that she was transported to her friend’s foster mother’s home nearby, where she lay on the floor in agony until the children came home from school.
“Afterward, we went back to Northern Arizona to his mother’s house,” Banks said. “There, I laid on the floor for days until the bleeding stopped.”
At the beauty shop, Banks again fell ill. She drove to the ER where doctors discovered an infection raging inside of her womb; they prescribed her antibiotics.
“The doctor seemed to be disappointed in me,” Banks said. “He just kept shaking his head. Later, I started cramping and went into the bathroom. That’s when I saw the remains of my baby come rushing out. All I could do was flush the toilet.”
Traumatized, Banks feared being alone. She recalls going out drinking and partying with anyone just to have a companion.
A new creation in Christ spurs forgiveness and a supernatural encounter
One day, Banks went with a friend who was a manager of a Christian rock band to attend a concert at a church. Afterward, at the altar call, Banks stepped forward.
Banks said, “The people at the church were so nice; it was such a sweet place. I had gone in as a lifeless 21-year-old woman who felt she had committed an unpardonable sin and became a new creation in Christ. I later got baptized there.”
Eventually Banks married a man with two children and grew in her relationship with Christ. Despite her desire to start a family of her own, she was unable to get pregnant again.
At church, she heard about the March for Life. She wanted to attend, but her husband was against the idea.
“Angry, I shut myself in our bedroom and cried,” Banks said. “I knew he was just trying to be protective. It was while I was in that room, that all the memories I had suppressed throughout the years came flooding back. I admitted to God that I had rejected the gift of life by walking into that abortion clinic.”
One by one, Banks forgave everyone instrumental in her abortion just as Jesus had forgiven her. Banks prayed for the man who fathered her child.
Banks said, “I [had] tried to call him when I found out I was pregnant but just got his commander. He eventually came back to Arizona before moving to Hawaii and came to see me at the beauty shop. I was hiding from the truth then, so I gave him the cold shoulder.”
As Banks released her resentment and pain, she experienced a vision of a trash can, and felt as if a spiritual being were compelling her to look inside it.
“I was stunned at the cruelty of being taunted,” Banks said. “I knew I was supposed to look inside but feared seeing my dead baby, yet I was given the strength to do so. As I did, a beautiful light came up toward me. I believe that was the essence of my baby radiating love for me.”
Finally, she felt set free from the guilt that had plagued her. Now, she could grieve properly.
Banks said, “I asked God if he could someday make America an abortion-free nation. I heard him say, ‘I can do it;’ I believe it because we serve a supernatural God. I am proof of that.”
