Abortion advocates claim that access to abortion empowers women. In reality, abortion sends the message to women that they aren’t capable. It says women aren’t strong enough, good enough, or smart enough to accomplish their dreams without killing their children. It’s the ultimate form of emotional abuse of women.
Choosing life, on the other hand, allows women to take control of their futures without harming anyone else. This is true empowerment, and these women prove that.
Tommitrise Collins
Collins taking her exam. Photo via Facebook.
Collins rose to internet fame when her sister snapped a photo of her during labor. But it wasn’t your typical photo. Collins was in her hospital bed with her laptop taking a college exam.
“It took me 4-5 hours after the opening of the test to try to put the pain to the side and do it so I wouldn’t have to do it later and I could enjoy my newborn,” Collins said at the time.
She finished her exam in less than the allotted time and while experiencing contractions which were 3 minutes apart. Her baby girl Tyler Elise was born after 20 hours of labor.
“She is my life now, and the way I look at it is, she will always have me to depend on, so my goals will not be put on hold,” said Collins. “I don’t want to just barely make it by, I want my child to live comfortably, and I want to show people that just because I am considered a young mother doesn’t mean I have to be considered a bad mother.”
Hillary
Photo credit: A Woman’s Friend
Hillary was homeless and addicted to heroin when she became pregnant. Hopeless and feeling that abortion was her only option, she reached out to A Woman’s Friend pregnancy center simply to get access to state medical benefits to pay for the abortion.
The center provided her with a free ultrasound and offered her support, but Hillary was still afraid that she would not be able to take care of her child.
“I remember telling my client advocate, ‘I can’t imagine how I’m going to stop using heroin for my baby. I can’t even do it for myself’,” Hillary explained.
However, the encouragement she received from A Woman’s Friend allowed her to consider keeping her child. Even after being arrested just a week later and spending 60 days in jail, the counselors and staff at A Woman’s Friend stuck with Hillary, allowing her to feel a sense of empowerment, even behind bars. She decided that when she was free she was going to use the resources available from A Woman’s Friend to change her life.
Months later, with help from the pregnancy center, Hillary gave birth to her baby boy Adam and was finally free from her addiction.
Danica Fountain
Shortly after her graduation from high school, Danica Fountain was concerned that she might be pregnant. She turned to a local pregnancy resource center that she drove by frequently. At the center, she told the counselor that if she was pregnant, she would have an abortion.
“She was so nice,” Fountain said. “She did not judge me at all. […] She showed me a picture of this baby that had arms and legs and a head. I couldn’t believe it because everyone referred to that as ‘tissue,’ that it was not a baby, which is why I was comfortable going through with an abortion.”
Despite this new-found knowledge, Fountain was still convinced that abortion was her only option because she was unwed and had only a high school education. Her boyfriend and a family member both agreed and told her to abort, saying it was the only way she would ever be successful. Fountain went to Planned Parenthood where her feelings of inadequacy were encouraged, and an appointment for that abortion was scheduled.
Remembering that the woman at the pregnancy center told her she could come back at any time to talk about alternatives to abortion, Fountain returned to the center for an ultrasound.
“That made it so real to me, that it wasn’t just tissue,” she explained.
Empowered by this true knowledge of life before birth as well as what options were available to her beyond abortion, Fountain chose life and gave birth to her baby girl. Grateful for her daughter’s life, Fountain now lobbies members of Congress about the work done by pregnancy resource centers.
“There are so many women out there who are making the decision to abort because they don’t know there are other options and no one is supporting them with those other options,” said Fountain.
Amanda
Amanda was 24 weeks pregnant when she headed into an abortion clinic to end the life of her preborn son. Her husband Chet was in jail at the time and they were both struggling with addiction. Amanda didn’t want to abort, but felt she had no other choice.
John Barros was at the abortion clinic that day and talked with Amanda about God and about her baby. Amanda was angry and didn’t want Barros to speak to her. When she went into the building for her abortion, the clinic staff discovered that she was too far along and offered to either send her to another clinic in a different state or lie on the paperwork to say she wasn’t as far along as she was.
“She said that all of a sudden, it was dark, but then it became a real darkness, and she started thinking, ‘I’ve got to get out of here’ and a light went on in her heart and she came out and she left,” said Barros.
Amanda chose life for her son and since then has remained clean. Chet was released from prison and their son Chase was born healthy.
The couple brings Chase to the abortion clinic every day to share their story of hope and healing with other abortion-minded women.
The couple is financially strained but has found help from Barros and others to get them over those hurdles.
“I have wonderful people who have stepped up and make sure I make it,” she said. “[…] We both had an addiction problem before the baby and he’s like really, really helped us stay strong.”
Miraculously, baby Chase was born without any drugs or methadone in his system. His parents are now focused on taking care of him, helping other women choose life, and becoming closer to God, whom they credit for saving their son through Barros.
“I don’t even think about drugs,” said Chet. “I only think about him.”
Natalia Vodianova
Vodianova was born to a poverty-stricken family in Russia. Her father abandoned the family and Vodianova worked alongside her mother at a fruit stand in order to pay the bills. At just 15 years old she began modeling and was very successful, sending money back home to help her mother and siblings.
Then, at age 19, Vodianova discovered she was pregnant. Eight months later she married her baby’s father, and they had two more children together.
However, because Vodianova was a model, her agency was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to work after gaining weight during her pregnancy.
“My agency thought I might never do shows because I was a bit shorter and not skinny enough, but when I gave birth to my first son I was 19 and I lost a lot of weight,” she told CNN in 2009. “[…] My career took off after Lucas was born because I opened up a lot of shows on the runway and that’s where a lot of stars are made in my industry.”
Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa
Herndon-De La Rosa and her son
At 16 years old, Herndon-De La Rosa gave birth to a baby boy, whom she credits with saving her. She believes women don’t need to sacrifice their dreams or their children, and that they can absolutely have both.
“The panic is temporary. The fear is temporary. The crisis is temporary,” she says of unplanned pregnancy. “The days when you wake up thinking ‘How did I make such a huge mistake’ are so few in retrospect.”
She says that her son, now 15 years old, is the best person she knows. And he’s the inspiration and reason behind New Wave Feminists, a group Herndon-De La Rosa launched which is dedicated to taking back feminism from those who hijacked it – pro-abortion women.
“I didn’t know it at the time,” she says. “But choosing life for him would give me a life that I wouldn’t trade for the world. […] I didn’t save my son by ‘choosing life.’ He saved me.”
Choosing life allows women to focus on what’s most valuable. It helps them to push forward and make better choices, especially if there are people surrounding them with love and support. Abortion however, keeps women down, buries them in guilt, and will always leave them wondering, “what if?”
