How You Can Join the Pro-Life Movement

In our lifetimes. The turtle say their pro-life and yes, keep your baby but then sometimes when a girl chooses life, they may shame them or condemn them or shut their doors and say they're not welcome here. So we wanted to be a safe place where we want to be a safe place with a call from Amy Ford.

She is urging all of us in the Christian community to live out our pro-life beliefs very real and tangible, which today on Focus on the Family will learn how you and I can take a more active role in the pro-life movement and be surprised about how simple it is to get involved your hostess focus Pres. and other Jim Daly and John Fuller, John Focus on the Family's always been unashamedly pro-life, and it's one of our foundational principles and over the years we've taken every opportunity to promote this message and I pray that focus for however long the Lord allows it to live and breathe that it will be staunchly pro-life, but we do undermine our national leaders and today's culture about the sanctity of human life created in the image of God right. We stand firmly there.

Every life is precious.

Whether it's in the womb or in the last days of this life and everything in between those who may suffer from abnormalities.

Whatever it might be. We stand for life and that we invite you to stand with us in this fight to become a pro-life advocate through activities like the March for life are volunteering at a pregnancy center near your partnering with ministries like Focus on the Family or embrace grace in word and hear from the leader of embrace grace today it's Amy Ford and she started embrace grace in order to help churches provide spiritual encouragement and support to younger single pregnant women who are vulnerable to having abortion because they think they're just out of options. This is it. I have to have an abortion.

Amy is an author and speaker, a podcast host and a pro-life advocate and has written two books about sitting moms and their pre-born babies.

One is called a bump in life and the latest one were going to be talking about today is called help her be brave discover your place in the pro-life movement, and you can learn more about that in the episode notes Amy welcome back to Focus on the Family me good to have you listen your active every day in this arena of life, and your counseling women in your helping young teen girls think through what is in front of them in the difficult choices that they face. You have said and I agree with this that the church isn't quite ready. If the Supreme Court would reverse Roe V Wade would we be ready to step up and be there and I think we would have a challenge in that area. Explain what you're saying at the ground level, capital, and it's not even just teen girls and their pregnancies can go all the way up into the 30s and I were just seeing a lot of times the big issue is that the girl doesn't actually feel like it's a safe place to go to when she has an expected pregnancy. The church is not the first thing that crosses their mind. Like I need help, let me go to the church and ask if they'll help me and I even talk to a girl the other day that was telling her story and she said that she had called three churches and I left messages. It was over the weekend and only then think she was pregnant scared.

She didn't want to do.

I need help, and only one called her back and so we can't just vote for life and then say hope it works out for you.

We have to be able to be ready physically, spiritually and emotionally to walk alongside the pregnancy and we can't usually I can just see girls being homeless or or not having and being able to afford childcare or things like that and we can't just let them go figure it out on their own when they're asking and pleading for help to know how to do this if they don't have access to an abortion and Amy you're coming from a place of experience. I mean, you're not just someone who wants to do good, which is on its face, that's good to but you're coming from a place of brokenness. What was your story while I had an unplanned pregnancy when I was 19 and I went to Christian private school new abortion is wrong my entire life is God blessed really didn't have a relationship with him.

So when I found out when I was unexpectedly expecting I was so terrified.

I really my biggest thing was as terrified as how my parents looking back at the like that silly because they were sad, but it wasn't as bad as what fear makes you think and what the enemy lies to you in that situation, and so me and the father the baby felt like abortion, we could just have an abortion will deal with the consequences of a broken heart.

Later, this will be a quick fix. Even though I grew up knowing abortion was wrong and said went to the abortion clinic we paid for it and I went in to have the procedure done as they were explaining to me what they were going to deal all of those emotions I had suppressed really just erupted in that moment and I ended up hyperventilating and passing out any abortion ran and when I came to the nurse was gaining me try to give me a drink of water and she said you're too emotionally distraught to make this decision today. You can come back another day. But you're not getting abortion today and so I got her credit for right now because I've talked to still many women that have experience in abortion under like that is not what happened with me that I went back out into the waiting room and I told the father the baby and we just were like okay like let's just deal with the consequences of what can happen.

And less is figured out together and so we told her parents. It wasn't as bad as we thought it was to be and we ended up getting married. We had been high school sweethearts for a long time.

We ended up getting married when I was 16 weeks pregnant and we had gone to the pastor that had led my husband to the Lord years before we asked him if he would marry yes and he said no I can't and won't marry you. I can't bless this marriage because of your sin and we were like we horrible people we can get married right felt like a scarlet letter on her wedding day.

We found someone else when Mary asked that the shame was so intense.

But one thing that's really cool. That was that pastor that would it Mary asked a couple of years later he ended up asking for forgiveness. He called my husband and said that I felt like it was my worst mistake in fostering history that ever made. Will you please forget me and that even just that season. Before that, even after it's kind of like the elephant in the room and people don't know whether to say congratulations. I'm sorry. So they just don't say anything and say you just feel alone in a crowd of people sure Amy, I want to dig into couple components what you've told us one your parents should mention that it wasn't as bad as what I thought it would be with my parents. Their parents maybe today who are listening right now. Later going to call from their pregnant teen daughter there to see them dinner and this discussion is going to happen, counsel do you give to parents about how to react. If this happens when I just believe that God is the creator of all life, and so he knew what he was doing and