In 2008, Tanya Jones sat in the waiting room of a Greensboro abortion center, every part of her soul telling her she should not be there.
Her boyfriend had tricked her. He told her he was taking her to lunch to talk about what they should do, but instead, he drove her to the abortion center.
“I cannot have this baby. You need to take care of this,” he said.
Nearly every voice around Tanya was pointing her toward abortion. She was only 18. She was in nursing school. She had dreams of becoming a nurse. Everyone kept telling her she could not raise a baby and still reach her goals.
Then, while she was viewing the ultrasound of her child, Tanya began to cry.
To her shock, the clinic worker looked at her and said, “You do not need to do this, you know.”
That was all Tanya needed to hear.
She ran out of the room, past her shocked boyfriend in the waiting room, and out of the building. When he followed her outside and confronted her, Tanya looked at him and said:
“Go live your life. I am having this baby.”
It was not easy, but God was faithful.
Tanya continued working toward her nursing degree. She delivered her daughter. And years later, when she walked across the stage to accept her nursing diploma, her daughter was there.
Tanya says God used her daughter to bring her back to faith. In fact, she gave her daughter the middle name Faith.
Years later, Tanya saw a Facebook post that stopped her in her tracks.
The very abortion center she had run out of in 2008 had closed for good.
The post came from Dustin Wilson, Love Life’s Greensboro City Director, who had once been her husband’s college roommate. Dustin invited Tanya to come share her testimony at the closed abortion center during Love Life’s May prayer walk.
Tanya stood there again, but this time, everything was different.
She was not walking out in fear.
She was standing in hope.
And as she finished sharing her testimony, her daughter, who had come so close to being aborted at that very facility, joined her on stage and wrapped her arms around her.
That closed abortion center is more than a building with locked doors. It is a testimony.
It is a testimony that God hears the prayers of His people and that when the Church gathers, prays, and refuses to look away, darkness does not get the final word.
This is why Love Life exists: to unite and mobilize the church to create a culture of love and life that will result in an end to abortion and the orphan crisis.
The same God who shut the doors in Greensboro can move in cities across this nation. The Church must be present with a different message: choose life, and we will walk with you.