Connie and Tyler Youngkin don’t just claim to be pro-life. For thirty years, they have lived a truly pro-life life. With their own children already raised, the Youngkins currently live in Tijuana, Mexico, rescuing kids off the streets and saving them from lives steeped in drugs and prostitution.
LifeSiteNews relates the Youngkins’ story:
[Connie] and her husband, Tyler, now live in Tijuana, Mexico, where they house, feed, clothe, and educate 80 children they rescued from the city’s streets.
Their young charges, who range in age from five to their early twenties, are the children of drug addicts and prostitutes. They were living in the city’s notorious red light district before they took refuge at Niños de la Promesa, Children of Promise, the children’s home founded by the Youngkins.
Whether from the streets of Tijuana or the forceps of an abortion doctor, Connie and Tyler have been rescuing children for three decades.
A rescued child from Ninos De La Promesa celebrates Christmas.
Interestingly, Connie was first introduced to the realities of abortion by a neighbor who sat her down when Connie commented on how “nice” Margaret Sanger was. Once armed with the truth, Connie took matters into her own hands. She and Tyler, a doctor, helped to found a pregnancy center that still serves women and children today. Connie also started working with Operation Rescue outside abortion clinics, where she was arrested. Connie willingly admitted that she had committed a crime:
‘If it is criminal to rescue babies sentenced to death, then I am a criminal,’ she told the press.
Connie faced charges more than once in her rescuing career. Once, a judge ordered her to stop using the word “baby” as she argued her own defense. In a courtroom, she explained:
‘There’s been a great deception in this country … from the abortion industry,’ Youngkin told the judge. ‘Women are being deceived as they go in these abortion clinics. Babies are being aborted to the sixth month (of pregnancy). Tongs are tearing arms and limbs apart. … This has to be stopped.’
During Connie’s days in jail, she again took matters into her own hands, refusing to let the truth be silenced:
She had been separated from other pro-lifers, and found herself surrounded by murderers, thieves, and drug addicts.
Determined to treat this as her new mission field, Connie set about forming friendships with her fellow inmates with the goal of evangelizing them.
On one occasion, she brought a pocket Bible into a holding cell of 40 women, and by the time she left her fellow inmates were singing Sunday school songs with her, marching around the cell to the tune of “When the Saints go Marching In.”
“The policemen were just looking at us like we were nuts!” she remembers with a laugh. “They were all really sweet girls.”
It’s an experience she now draws from as she walks the streets of Tijuana’s red light district, where she is seemingly as out of place as a mild-mannered Christian housewife in a maximum security prison.
Even in Mexico, the Youngkins and their Mexican children work to stop abortion. They educate others on the humanity of unborn children with pro-life signs and literature. No matter where life is found, the Youngkins believe in embracing and loving it.
All of the children, it seems, have imbibed a lesson borrowed from Connie’s pro-life activism and her time in prison. ‘If we just give people a chance and just love them with God’s love, it’s amazing the change that can happen,’ she says.
Karina Irene visited Niños De La Promesa and reported on the incredible work the Youngkins are doing in Tijuana:
Just 20 minutes from where we drink our Starbucks and our children get hugs from us everyday, live hundreds of children who are used for crime, drugs and human trafficking. The children here live in the most dangerous, crooked and desperate part of Tijuana. At Ninos de la Promesa, the children get a chance at a real life with a future that holds something more than drugs or prostitution, which is for most the only path they will ever know. Today I met some of the sweetest kids. From the huge smiles on their faces you would never dream of the horrible things that have been done to them or the terrible things they have witnessed.
Biola University regularly sends students down to help at the Youngkins’ orphanage. Named “Niños De La Promesa” (Children of the Promise), the orphanage allows children to be children and to live a peaceful, joy-filled life. The kids are exposed to the kind of things that all kids should be allowed to do – painting their nails, playing with dogs, blowing bubbles, and doing fun sports activities. They are also provided with an education and taught to give back to their community.
3 times a week, the teenagers make burritos in the kitchen and re-visit their old neighborhood, passing out the food to homeless or desperate women and children.
A Biola sophomore, Jessica Airey, made the video below, which showcases a trip down to Niños De La Promesa.
Tyler and Connie Youngkin demonstrate the potential of any committed pro-lifer. When we commit ourselves to saving as many lives as possible, there is no telling where we will go or what we will be allowed to do. The important thing is being willing to answer the call. Lives are at risk all across our nation and around the world. Let us step up and say, “Here am I. Send me.”
