👶👶👶 Change the Rules 👶👶

A few days ago I was standing on the sidewalk as a woman approached me. She happened to appear to be a woman of one of the cultures that had subscribed  to the population control theory. She started asking me in broken English,  if I was working with Planned Parenthood and I answered that I was not. I Asked her if she was pregnant. She said that she was. I felt my heart slip a little as I questioned whether she was seeking an abortion. She responded that she was and asked if I had the medicine for that. I told her I did not have that type of medicine and that I worked for an organization that did not support abortion. I then started to ask her questions about her situation. I pressed a little about how she really felt about aborting her baby and I was surprised that she began to cry. This usually doesnt happen with women from this culture. I asked if she would like to come to our building to talk and to my even greater surprise she said yes. 

We walked toward the building and exchanged names while I introduced her to a few of the volunteer prayer warriors. I told her that these volunteers were praying for her. Once we were in the building I offered her water and we sat down across from each other and I showed her models of what her baby looked like. She said she knew she was carrying a baby but that in her culture nobody had more than one or two children and she already had two. She said this as she pulled her phone out to show me pictures of her young children. As we continued the conversation it became very apparent that she did not want to have an abortion. She felt there was no choice but to abort because of the cultural pressures. I asked if her husband loved her and she said he did very much. I asked if she could have the conversation about wanting to keep their baby. She responded that she could and that she felt he would support her. We talked more about the cultural difference from the country she moved from, which was India, and the fact that she now lived in a country where there wasn't any governmental or societal pressure to restrict the amount of children we can have. We talked about women needing to stand up to protect our children including the ones in the womb. She seemed empowered as she left. We exchanged numbers and I reached out with encouragement and a promise to help if she needed it. I may never know if she goes through with her pregnancy but I will have planted a seed for her and possibly for future generations to change the cultural thought process of disregard for life.