Coincidence? I think not.

Last week a lovely young woman walked into our office with both her grandmother and her five-month old son in tow. As they waited in the front room, she confided in me that she wanted an abortion for the six-week old pregnancy she currently carried.

We started filling out the intake form, and as I went through the questions I also asked others, wanting to get to know her this woman and her story. ¨How old is your baby?¨ I said, as I calculated her due date from the last question she had answered. ¨Five months,¨ she answered, ¨He was born on March 30.¨

¨Excuse me?¨ I said, ¨Did you just say March 30?¨

She nods yes.

¨Because that's the due date of this baby too.¨

Not too many minutes later, she´s beaming out in the front room as grandma cradles the five-month old and triumphantly calls the rest of the family concerning baby-to-be.

Isaiah 55:9

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

So many times in our work, the women will tell us that they want a child eventually but just not right now. "I'm not ready," plays in our counseling rooms on a near-constant loop. This is also an argument often evoked politically by those who call themselves pro-choice.

As a Christian, of course I believe every life has a purpose, a plan, unlimited potential and promise. If the woman is pregnant, if the child is here, then this is the right time. God's ways are higher than ours. This child is a blessing, given to this woman to enrich her life in ways unimagined.

I do understand that sometimes this could look like tension here, the difficulty in certain situations [and we see these worst-case scenarios on a regular basis] in reconciling these two concepts -- how could a child possibly make this woman's life better, some might reason, when she's so young, or when she needs to finish school, or when her family situation is so volatile? Often we need to remind ourselves that God is in control, that He can see ahead and inside hearts in ways we never will.

But occasionally He allows us to see a bit of His workings and greater plan as well.

A few weeks ago I met a young woman, abortion bound. She left her family in Virginia when she was 16 and came to New York. The father of the child, she admitted, is a complete loser -- unemployed, sleeps with her but does not love her, immediately told her to get an abortion upon hearing news of his fatherhood. She makes her money working as a stripper in Long Island.

Liz and I spoke with her, not just about her pregnancy but also about the other things going on in her life -- her family, the boyfriend, her job. And as we talked, I watched this amazing change come over her attitude and her outlook. At first she had been proudly defiant of working as a stripper, but then she admitted she was ashamed and wanted to do something else. At first she had said she didn't care about the father, but she it become clear she wished she had chosen a better man to share herself with. At first she wanted an abortion, but when she left she was happily clutching a sonogram appointment and promising to keep in touch with Liz and me as she gave us parting hugs.

Yesterday I got an email from her, and she's seven weeks along, and so excited about this pregnancy and this new phase of her life. This baby will be more than her first child; it will reorient her entire life. She dumped that guy. She has thought about moving back to Virginia to be near her family. And of course no pregnant woman can be a stripper. This so-called crisis pregnancy, instead of weighing her down even more, has liberated her from a damaging lifestyle and jolted her into a better future.

God never makes mistakes. Each pregnancy, each child conceived, is here for a reason. And who knows but that this child is the answer to a woman's problems, not the cause?

Coming Home

I wish you could meet Simone.

Of course that's not her real name. And of course you will never meet her. But God let me meet her.

Yesterday, as He planned since before time, a girl from Chicago and a girl from New Jersey crossed paths in the South Bronx. And next spring a child will be born who was otherwise scheduled for death.

Simone came to our center all the way from New Jersey. She googled us one day, came pushing one child in a stroller and asking for an abortion for the one she held in her womb. That morning we had been slammed by walk-ins, and by the time I started counseling her, she had waited 40 minutes. After filling out the intake form and talking with her a bit, I didn't have much hope. She wouldn't even watch the informational film we have concerning the different types of abortion procedures. "It's my choice and I've already made up my mind," she kept repeating, cutting me off as I entreated her to reconsider.

Simone's daughter is beautiful, a laughing, smiling, silly little girl, nearly three years old. As we talked, Simone and I figured out that she was about 9 weeks along in her pregnancy, and I brought out a model we have of what her child looks like at that stage -- just a few inches long, but formed exactly as you would expect, tiny hands and feet, eyes and nose. And though Simone didn't even want to look at it, her daughter loved the little baby, giggling and reaching for it when I showed it to her.

I'll never know what exactly changed Simone's mind; I was saying so many different things and approaching her situation from every angle I could think of . . . but I suspect it was this miniature child, lifeless but mirroring the life within.

Suddenly the walls broke down. Through her tears, she told me so much she had been holding back -- the controlling boyfriend who routinely beats her and her daughter, how much she misses her mom who died a few years ago, that she stopped going to church after her mom died because her boyfriend gets jealous everytime she leaves the apartment.

Trapped. That's the word she used. She didn't want to get an abortion. She couldn't see any other way out.

And God let me be there. I was blessed to cross her path at that moment, to be in a position to offer help. EMC has connections to many organizations and social services throughout the city, and one of the best is the Sisters of Life, an order of nuns specifically entrusted with protecting the sanctity of life. They offer more help than you could imagine, and I told Simone that they could help her escape, could help her get away from this man, could help her start over. "Please come with me," I said, "Please come with me right now to Manhattan and you can start over today. You can keep your baby, we will help you." I promised.

And amazingly, she agreed to come with me to Manhattan. She had known me for less than an hour, but she trusted me and and that we could help her. And I am so grateful, so incredibly glad, to have been there, to have been connected to the resources, to have been able to keep that promise.

Five hours, four subway lines, and three different convents later, Simone and her daughter and I reached her new home. We had to visit two locations of the Sisters of Life before being able to place her that evening with a home run by the Missionaries of Charity. She can stay there until after the baby is born. She wants to keep her baby; she always had. She kept asking her daughter questions if she was excited about shopping for new baby clothes and picking out a name. She wants to start fresh.

Not only did Simone and her daughter reach a safe place, away from the abuse and pain they had known for so long. Not only is she keeping her baby, and thrilled about it. But while we were at the Sisters of Life, trying to figure out where she would go, we had a moment to step into the chapel. We knelt down on the benches, Simone in the bench in front of me and the Mother Superior in the bench behind me. Silence and peace, and as Simone prayed the tears ran down her face. She turned around and told me, "It feels like I've come home."

Welcome home, Simone. We have such joy to meet you here.

Politics, Policy, and Real People

One more thought on our trip to Washington DC earlier this week --

Until interning this summer with EMC, all my pro-life work had been on the political side -- activism, educational outreach, lobbying, opinions articles. I tend to approach problems this way, with a political bent or methodically from an intellectual standpoint. This makes me a fine student, but it doesn't necessarily translate into our work here.

Since my arrival in May, I have learned enormous amounts of information concerning fetal development, abortion procedures, and the help available in New York City to pregnant mothers. But mostly my time and thoughts have been concerned with the chaotic, surprising, and often heartbreaking situations of the women and girls we see.

This is real life. These people aren't ideas or abstractions. They are not here to back up mine or yours or anyone else's ideology. Half these women don't even know what the labels pro-life and pro-choice mean.

So standing in Washington DC in front of Nancy Pelosi's office and trying to get members of the US House of Representatives to listen to our demands seemed almost surreal. Holding a banner, declaring that 'Abortion is not Healthcare,' listening to the empassioned words of Alveda King on the steps of the Cannon building, I marveled at how distant these two aspects of our fight can seem.

Which matters more? The woman sitting right in front of me, not convinced the life inside her is precious and unique? Or the bill sitting on the desk of every US Representative, mandating that every taxpayer pays into a fund which will enable women across the country to get abortions that much easier?

And the question for me becomes, for whom are we fighting? It might be easy enough for those who are pro-choice to use rhetoric and weak statistical evidence to make their case on Capitol Hill, but on the streets of the Bronx their case falters pretty quickly. In the face of the women we see, the politics of abortion seem irrelevant, and oftentimes purposefully ignorant. After working for EMC this summer, the arguments concerning why taxpayer-funded abortions constitute a public good have become barely comprehensible to me -- do policy makers even attempt to understand the people and situations they are supposedly trying to help?

Inside the Beltway or out, I'm grateful for the different opportunities I've had to fight this fight, grateful for the chances I've been given and the perspectives I've seen. After this summer, it is likely that I will return to more political pro-life activity, but I will never forget the faces of the real women I've met, the lives I've been blessed to impact and those who've blessed me, and just how high these stakes really are.

Press Conference on Capitol Hill

We had the oppertunity to visit Washington DC for three days to take part in two Press Conferences on Capitol Hill. During which we protested the Abortion Mandate in the Propossed Heathe Care Reform Bill. Alveda King and other leaders in the African American Community spoke about the effect of abortion on the Black population in America. Our very own Chris Slattery spoke about EMC and the work we do with women in Crisis Pregnancies in New York City. Later we walked the halls of Congress praying that this unjust bill would not pass. It was exciting to participate in a moment that will go down in history.

Everyone wants a birthday

It's always surprising to see the scars that come out when counseling these women. We are all sometimes guilty of holding close yesterday's hurts and allowing them to color our actions today.

Recently I met a woman in our South Bronx center who is the eldest of several girls, all of whom currently have children out of wedlock. As the eldest, she has always had more responsibility, and has always felt that her mother didn't appreciate how hard she works, how little she asks for, and how difficult a time she has caring for her own daughter.

I know this explanation is a bit convoluted, but basically this woman was considering abortion because her relationship with her own mother was so poor -- she didn't have the support she needed, she couldn't bring another child into this situation . . . she was allowing the pain from her past to be stronger the promise of tomorrow.

The most recent example this woman gave of her mother hurting her was that just a few days previously, her mother had forgotten her birthday. Her own mother actually did not acknowledge her daughter's birthday in every way -- and they live in the same house.

That's a pretty sad story, right? A mother forgetting her own child's birthday. No cake, no card, no mention of anything special at all.

But it's not so sad. After all, there are sadder things. At that moment Liz said, "At least your mother gave you birthdays. Wouldn't it be worse to have never had one at all? Everyone wants a birthday."

Perspective. Gentle but firm.

This woman decided to keep her baby. A week later, I was in the room when she had her first sonogram. At sixteen weeks now, her baby will join us in late January, just around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. One more child, one more chance at life, one more birthday.

One life wanted and many others not

This past Saturday, a good friend of mine had to attend the funeral of his sister-in-law. He had to watch his brother say goodbye to his college bride, had to watch her parents bury their precious child, had to acknowledge that this member of his family was gone.

And this week while counseling I have thought many times about my friend and his family, the juxtaposition of his sister-in-law's life and death and the sort I see here.

She fought cancer for six years, gave everything she had to stay here, to steal more time, to absorb as much of this life and this earth as possible. They called her funeral a celebration, not a mourning that she died so young but a joyful time of remembrance that she touched so many while she was here.

Would a single person who knows her have preferred to have not met her at all than to have met her and had to watch as her light slowly faded out?

And every day I meet women who would so quickly throw life away. The stories vary, the situations are often less the ideal, but still -- to have to bargain, to have to cajole, to have to plead with a mother that she would save the life of her child -- I wish they could see what joy this child might bring them, if only they would open up to the possibility.

Every single day I watch women as they try to make this incredibly heavy decision, as they waver between the life and death of their child. I will never stop being surprised by their situations, I will never cease to be touched by their suffering and their tears. And I will never meet a woman for whom abortion would ease her burden or save her from pain.

To cast off the life of your child, it is a tragedy. No celebration of life nor mourning of death for these little ones -- and we will never know, how bright each life might have shined.

A Kind of Love Called Hope

One of my favorite parts about this summer has been the beautiful sense of community the interns have in the house. Gathered from so many different places, sharing the most important values of faith and family, I think I speak for everyone when I say that we truly enjoy spending time with each other.

Every night we'll discuss our days with each other, sharing both the moments of joy and those of sorrow. Encouragement, advice, support, and prayer are all offered. And though the girls I have personally seen are usually the ones who stay with me, occasionally another intern's experience will hit home.

Laura and I go over our days together almost every night; she's not only my housemate but my roommate, and one of my closest friends here. Wise beyond her years, calm and thoughtful, I know she has touched many girls this summer and her presence has been a blessing to everyone in the house as well.

Last night she told me a story of a young girl who came into her office -- maybe 17 or 18 -- a young girl who had every socially acceptable reason to abort her child: difficult childhood, history of abuse, lack of familial and spousal support. But after discussing her situation for a bit with Laura, she decided to keep her baby. She decided to defy conventional wisdom, and the odds against her, and she decided to choose life -- a better life for herself, and life at all for her child.

Laura, she who might be the most mature 19-year old I have ever met, was marveling at the wisdom of this girl who had come into her office. And one phrase she repeated to me, which I know I won't forget. "There's a kind of love called hope," the young girl said -- her explanation of her choice.

There's nothing I can add to the exquisite and simple truth this girl gave to Laura, which Laura gave to me. There's a kind of love called hope . . . what that we could give that love to every girl we meet.

Genuine community care

It's not uncommon for girls who come into our centers to have heard about us via referral. Usually that referral comes from a sister or friend, but, inexplicably, we get the occasional referral from a Planned Parenthood or other local abortion clinic.

Today Grace and I met a girl who needed a pregnancy test. The last time she had needed a pregnancy test she'd gone to Planned Parenthood, but after hearing about us from a friend she decided to see us first. Grace and I chatted with her as we filled out the intake form and she took her test, and after her test result was negative, talked to her a little bit about abstinence and the consequences of sex. She was smiling and laughing with us, listening to us and trusting us. At one point she told us, "I'm so glad I came here . . . You guys are so much nicer than Planned Parenthood!"

An important part of our work is building this level of friendship with the girls, showing them we are not just doing a job or dealing with them when they're right in front of us, but proving that we care about them tomorrow and next week too, that we care about their other children, their families and their friends, these communities. It's been good to see that these deeper relationships are not uncommon at EMC.

No such thing as chance

One cool thing about EMC is that we have so many outposts throughout the city -- I believe in the Bronx alone we have four different locations from which we work.

Earlier this week, I spent the day at our clinic near Fordham & Jerome, and I counseled a girl of about 18 who said a lot of the things we hear every day -- she's scared to tell her mom, she's just 'not ready' for a baby, she had never really considered the possibility that she might get pregnant, even though she's been sexually active for several years. We talked for awhile, she cried, I gave her a sonogram appointment for a few weeks hence, but when she left I could tell she was far from convinced.

Today I was assigned to another one of our clinics in the Bronx, on E. 149th Street. We had an incredibly busy morning, and I felt like I was rushing from girl to girl for several hours. While counseling one girl, I momentarily stepped out to grab a pamphlet, and there in the corner, filling out the intake form, was my girl from Fordham & Jerome. She had no idea the two centers were connected, and she had come to another EMC center looking for an abortion -- two in one week!

After I spotted her and she realized she was in another EMC clinic, and after talking to Jose and Maria for a few minutes, she realized that maybe God was telling her something, sending her across my path twice in one week. She happily told me that she was definitely keeping her baby now, and we agreed to meet up at her sonogram appointment in a few weeks.

In a city of 8 million people with untold numbers of abortion clinics and pregnancy centers, not to mention the fact that I could be in any one of six locations on any given day, I can only marvel at the amazing way God orchestrated our meetings this week. What a beautiful way to spend a Friday afternoon.

The way God wants it

This afternoon at our Brooklyn center a Nigerian woman stopped by who had come in for the first time a couple weeks ago. On her first visit, she had been planning to have an abortion but changed her mind upon glimpsing her child on the sonogram screen.

She came back to visit and to chat, and she told us she had picked out a name for her child. She plans to call him Boluwatife. She beamed as she told us what her son's name will mean in Nigerian -- the way God wants it.

The first glimpse

It feels like a movie, honestly. Those scenes in which a woman's face is turned toward the screen and she's nearly literally glowing, beaming in amazement as she stares at the first image of her child, hears its heartbeat. They cry. They clutch the father's hand. Their jaws drop and they hold their breath as the abstract concept growing inside becomes a visible reality.

I spent today assisting one of our ultrasound technicians. I saw ultrasounds performed on women from as early as six weeks to as late as thirty-six weeks, an amazing spectrum of development. The sonogram is one of the best tools we have in this work, so simple yet so powerful -- a real-time viewing, an inside picture. At EMC we're lucky that we can so easily refer to and provide girls with free sonograms; I've seen many abortion-minded women change their mind after that moment, after that first glimpse. And that -- that feels better than a movie.

The chapel's respite

In our center in the south Bronx, there is a backroom that has been converted into a chapel. Stained glass window hangings, wooden floors, a crucifix as the centerpiece. Though the exhaust sounds and noisy chattering of people below still seep in from the street, this room is moment of peace and refuge from the draining intensity of our work.

Today one of the saddest girls I have ever met came in, and after she left I returned once more to the chapel for a bit of solace. Afterward I was talking to one of our directors, who has been at this work for nearly ten years, asking her how she could continue, how she could bear the weight of sorrow and tears she sees every day.

She told me a story about when she just started, about how the work did start to pile up and she wondered why God had placed her here, in the south Bronx, in one of the worst neighborhoods in New York City. And then the realization came to her that it is *because* this neighborhood is so bad, so broken, so despondent, that God has placed her here. "If Jesus were alive today," she said, "He would walk these streets. He would minister to these people." Christ came to suffer with those who are so downcast they could not even lift their head, and in this work we see those same people.

The worst part is we cannot always help, we cannot always make things better. But what we can do, what we are called to do here and what every Christian is called for, is to walk with them as they suffer.

It's all we can do, and sometimes it doesn't feel like much, but at least when I walk back into the chapel I remember that we are not alone either.

Got the power

Last week a girl came in who was already tearing up when she sat down. She would barely look at me as we filled out the intake form together, and about five minutes into it, she finally looked at me and said, "I don't want to do it."

Sometimes people come into our centers expecting abortion services. Sometimes boyfriends make appointments for their girlfriends to get abortions, without asking the girl first. This guy had made the appointment without asking, driven her to the clinic, and was waiting outside as we had our consultation. He had told her to get it done, and he fully expected her to comply.

It happens more than you think.

It happens more than I thought. One girl's boyfriend kicked her down the stairs when he heard she was pregnant -- if she hadn't miscarried he'd have taken her to the clinic straight away. Another woman came in with a black eye after having the same argument with her boyfriend. All too often abortion is touted as some sort of empowerment for women. I promise you it's not. It's just one more way for them to be abused by men.

This girl came in distraught, so alone, so confused. If her boyfriend had taken her to a different sort of place, she very easily could have been cajoled into giving up her baby. As it is, this story has a happy ending -- we talked about how *of course* she could keep her baby, how *of course* he had no right to ask this of her. She left with an appointment for a free sonogram and pre-natal care, and the smile of a woman joyfully anticipating her first child.

To suffer and to love

I arrived at the Lifehouse about a week and a half ago, unsure of what to expect but prepared to stay all summer. So far my time has here has been more rewarding than I could have imagined, small graces and joys piling up on one another.

Already I’ve heard stories so complicated and twisted I couldn’t have made them up. These girls and women come in and they are terrified. They feel trapped by their circumstances — not enough money, incomplete education, bad advice from parents, boyfriends. Oftentimes there’s a past hurt haunting them — a previous terminated pregnancy, sexual abuse, the death of a loved one for whom they still grieve.

They come in and we talk. We begin as complete strangers, but it’s not long before I hear things they don’t tell their husbands or boyfriends, their mothers or best friends.

We talk and I try to offer help. Concrete help, in the form of the many resources available, is easy enough. Soon enough I’ll be able to rattle off the various agencies and social services without a second thought. But before they can get to the point where they will consider food stamps or a maternity home, they need help with their pain.

Suffering. These girls are suffering, and in a very real sense this pregnancy will cause them to suffer in a way that no one else can ease. And they somehow believe that the suffering of carrying a pregnancy to term is far greater than the suffering of ripping your own child from within you and living with that knowledge until the day you die. Not because they’re cruel, not because they’re unintelligent. Because they have been misinformed and lied to. Because their circumstances for bringing life into the world are far from ideal.

Because they feel alone.

One of the center directors emphasizes this a lot. Look at the girl, she says. Look at her as though she is the most important person in the world to you. Look at her and see how she suffers, see how she carries this weight and is without hope. And I’m beginning to, accepting this challenge and this gift.

To suffer with those who suffer is, I have always thought, one of the most beautiful parts of Christ’s life on earth.