Hello, Team Ward!  This is from a blog that Sara wrote recently and we wanted to share it with you!

I’m sitting in a small white classroom with a handful of other adoptive parents trying to get their adoption education hours completed for their home study. Two women sit on a discussion panel in the front of the room, telling the stories of how they chose adoption and how it changed their lives forever.

One birth mom, who had a little girl 18 months ago, says,

“I had an abortion scheduled.”

My eyes flicker over to her. She’s dressed in a pretty hippie skirt and tank top. She says it casually, like she’s talking about a hair appointment, like it’s just another date on the calendar: Abortion at 2:00.

She was all ready to walk in that clinic and get the mess off her hands, this unplanned pregnancy interrupting her college career and her future.

She goes on, “I had an abortion scheduled, but then I cancelled it.  I went to a crisis pregnancy center on campus. I knew I wanted to choose adoption.”

She continues with her story but I’m still reeling from this news.

She was this close to aborting her baby. Then she walked into the pregnancy center and did something radical. She chose adoption.

This was the turning point that saved her baby’s life.

The other birth mom on the panel has dark hair and glasses, and sits on the discussion panel with the the adoptive family and her daughter. The little girl flits around the room, her dark curls bobbing with every step, her eyes dancing with light. The birth mom tells her story and says her family pressured her to get an abortion.

“They wanted me to get an abortion” she says.  She told them no.

“No one in my family supported my decision to choose adoption, except my grandma.”

These words echo around the room among the perspective adoptive parents.

It was a brave choice to go against what everyone’s telling you–to stand against the current, alone and unsupported, and do one radical act of love.

The relationship with her adoptive family began while she was still pregnant. She called them when she was struggling, leaning on them for emotional support when her family was failing her.

The adoptive mother and birth mom even decided on a name for the baby together.

Even though her own family failed her, she admits, “I have a new family through adoption.”

Her decision to adopt is a game-changer, altering the whole course of her and her daughter’s life.

Afterwards, I thank the birth moms for sharing their stories with such courage.  And you can see it written all over their faces. No regrets.

It’s not until later, after I walk out the door of that meeting and see the news about more Planned Parenthood videos that I realize these birth moms are doing something radical against the abortion industry.

Instead of choosing a quick ticket out of pregnancy through abortion, they’re choosing to hold on to their unplanned babies and give them the best gift possible: Life.

For all of us wondering the best way to fight back against Planned Parenthood and the millions of babies dying, I hear it in the words of that birth mom who confesses what she did:

“I had an abortion scheduled.  Then I cancelled it.  I knew I wanted adoption for my baby.”

Because maybe the best way we can fight back against abortion clinics isn’t to helplessly stand by and shake our heads at the atrocity, but to support young women who are choosing another path for their babies, one that might involve parenting or adoption.

Supporting adoption is one way you are helping women who find themselves in hard places, faced with difficult decisions.

While we can’t always stop people from getting abortions, maybe we can offer moms another path.

By supporting the work adoption agencies and crisis pregnancy centers do in counseling these women to consider other options, we take an important step towards putting a dent in the abortion industry.

It takes an entire community of people supporting, encouraging and helping women choose life. This is the backbone of a movement towards offering women another path.  Thank you.