Three years ago Rebecca Rizzi was on her way to a Planned Parenthood in Tempe, Arizona, to discuss abortion. She was five weeks pregnant and she truly believed she had no other options. Pro-life activists were at the abortion center that day and helped Rizzi change her mind and choose life. Now Rizzi has a message for other women considering abortion.
Rizzi told Glenn Beck in a 2014 interview that she planned on having the baby, but the father of the child told her that there were other options. Rizzi began to doubt her decision to have the baby.
“I felt I had to do it [abort],” Rizzi told The Blaze back in 2014. “It was a situation where I hadn’t talked to my family in a long time – same with friends.”
Rizzi told The Blaze that she knew abortion was morally wrong, but she was alone and didn’t believe she could take care of her child on her own. She called Planned Parenthood who told her they would give her a pill to stop the pregnancy and a second pill to take at home that would “expel the pregnancy”. This medical abortion procedure is explained by former abortionist Anthony Levatino in this video:
But when Rizzi arrived at Planned Parenthood, she saw the pro-life activists there, and after she went inside, every time someone opened the door to Planned Parenthood she could hear those activists. She was sitting in the waiting room for about an hour when she decided to go outside. There she met Sherry Pierce, a member of the “Refuge in the Desert” ministry.
“Sherry asked me to tell her what was going on, why I had to feel like I had to do this,” explained Rizzi. “She told me there were all these resources. She took me to the pregnancy crisis center, and I think that day I had changed my mind after what Sherry said to me.”
Rizzi decided not to abort and was considering adoption when she discovered she was pregnant with twins. She decided to raise her daughters herself.
Pierce was by her side to help her throughout the pregnancy including throwing a baby shower. She was also there to congratulate Rizzi when she gave birth to babies Olivia Grace and Kara Shea in December of 2013.
“I was at the hospital with her family when she was in labor and have been to visit and take food since,” Pierce told The Blaze in 2014. “She has become like family to us all. … I try to check in daily through text with her to see how she and the babies are doing and if they need anything.”
The girls are now two and a half years old, and though it’s challenging to raise twins, Rizzi recently told The Blaze that it’s made her a stronger person and helped her to reach for and achieve new goals.
“I cannot even begin to imagine my life without my girls,” said Rizzi. “I wouldn’t want to. They have been such a blessing and the honest truth is … if I had an abortion I likely would have taken my own life as so many post-abortive women do.”
Rizzi is grateful to Pierce and the other pro-life activists for helping her and her daughters. All of the material things aside, she says Pierce gave her what she was really missing: hope.
“Sherry and her church have been such a blessing,” she said. “They have provided us with an incredible amount of help, but the most important gift they gave me was hope for the future, hope for our lives. They believed that I could absolutely do this and they were right. Imagine if I had thrown all of this away out of fear? It wasn’t the end of the world; it was a new beginning.”
Rizzi wants her experience to be shared so other women who believe abortion is their only option will also find hope. These women might not realize that there is help available because they are feeling alone and scared.
“To any women contemplating abortion, I beg you to seek other options. There are many clinics, doctors, organizations and ministries that dedicate themselves to helping women in your situation,” she told The Blaze. “They want to help you. Do not let anyone force or intimidate you into making a choice that cannot be reversed. Pregnancy is temporary, the infant years fly by, the not so terrible twos don’t last. Everything is temporary. Death is permanent. Abortion is permanent.”
