1- DR. ALVEDA KING

Hi – I’m Dr. Alveda King. I’m the author of “King Rules”. January 22 is my birthday. January 22 is also the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court ruling that struck down most state laws prohibiting abortion, effectively legalizing abortion in all 50 states.

Each year, I celebrate my birthday, along with that of my late uncle, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (whose birthday is January 15), by participating in the March for Life. My efforts to promote the sanctity of life carry on my uncle’s dream, because he believed that every human life is valuable.

But I was not always pro-life. In my early years, I strayed from the Christian beliefs I held from childhood and I fell into pro-abortion propaganda. As a young woman in the midst of major marital problems, I had two abortions. The first was without my knowledge! A doctor performed a D & C procedure without informing me that I was pregnant. The second was under pressure from my husband.

When I became pregnant again, after the breakup of my marriage, I intended to have a third abortion. However, my grandfather, Martin Luther King Sr., urged me to spare the life of his great-grandchild. Even more important, he backed up his plea with an offer of help. I had the baby, and the course of my life changed.

Even so, I remained pro-choice until my reconciliation with Christ in 1983. After that, God’s Word caused me to value the sanctity of life.

2- NORMA MCCORVEY

Hi – I’m Norma McCorvey. I am the once-anonymous woman behind the Roe v. Wade ruling. I was assigned the pseudonym Jane Roe in the case that began when I filed suit against my home state of Texas after being denied an abortion in 1969. I was 21 at the time.

A lot of people don’t know this, but, by the time my case made its way to the Supreme Court, I had long since given birth and placed the child for adoption. Back then, I didn’t understand what abortion entailed and was barely involved in the lawsuit that my activist lawyers took to the Supreme Court, a case based on a number of fabrications.

In the book Reversing Roe: The Story of Norma McCorvey, I tell my story, which includes the fact that I eventually began to speak out in support of abortion rights in order to justify my conduct and became a national figure for the pro-choice movement.

After I went to work at an abortion clinic in the 1990s, the gentle and persistent witness of pro- lifers who were protesting there helped break the hard shell that I had formed to protect my fragile and broken sense of self. Over time, my animosity toward the protesters developed into fondness. I began to consider questions about abortion that I had long been ignoring.

In my book Won by Love I write about how I found myself gazing at a poster depicting fetal development, and the truth struck me:

The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. Norma, I said to myself, They’re right. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, ten-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, That’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth—that’s a baby!

Influenced by the witness of the pro-life activists that I regularly encountered, I professed faith in Christ. In 1995 I was baptized in the backyard pool of one of the men who had protested at the abortion clinic where I had been working.

3- CAROL EVERETT

Hi – I’m Carol Everett. Like Norma McCorvey, I was deeply entrenched in abortion advocacy. I estimate that I oversaw 35,000 abortion procedures while operating four abortion clinics in Texas from 1977 to 1983. I brought home a goodly sum for each procedure, I must confess. I detail it in my book Blood Money: Getting Rich Off a Woman’s Right to Choose. Although the money was a significant motivator, it wasn’t the true root of my abortion advocacy. My first encounter with abortion was personal, not professional.

In The Scarlet Lady: Confessions of a Successful Abortionist, I relate that in 1973, just weeks after Roe v. Wade, both my husband and my doctor encouraged me to abort her third pregnancy. I had borne two children already. Shortly after the abortion, my life spiraled downward: I began an extramarital affair, started to abuse alcohol, and separated from my husband. Throwing myself into my work at a medical supply business, I eventually came to work for a chain of abortion clinics, where my business skills and financial acumen soon had the clinics doubling the number of abortions sold each month. Hoping to expand operations, I met with a business consultant that I hoped would assist me. Instead, the man introduced me to Jesus Christ.

Upon my return to the clinic, I saw everything with new eyes—especially the crying women and girls seated inside. I finally faced the reality of my own abortion—and the thousands I had helped bring about. Today I am a vocal pro-life advocate who exposes the business side of the abortion industry while appealing for the value of human life as a speaker and author, and I lead a resource network that supports crisis pregnancy centers.

4- ABBY JOHNSON

Hi – I’m Abby Johnson. Carol Everett’s story—along with exposés like the undercover videos released last year by the Center for Medical Progress in which Planned Parenthood employees describe the abortion business—makes it tempting to assume that everyone involved in the abortion business is callous and uncaring. But many, including Everett, who profited financially from abortion, have deeper, more personal reasons for advocating abortion. And others, probably most, believe they are actually doing good. This is true of me, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director and author of Unplanned.

I and nearly all of my colleagues worked in the clinic because of a sincere desire to help women—and many, like me, were drawn in spite of, not because of, abortion. I thought that I was working to reduce the incidence of abortion when I first volunteered at a Planned Parenthood clinic as a college student. Eventually working my way up to clinic director, I also convinced myself that by limiting the clinic’s abortions to those performed earlier in pregnancy, the staff was not really involved in killing babies. Having had two abortions myself made it even more important for me to cling to this view.

Only later, after the scales had begun to fall from my eyes, did I realize that my approach abandoned God’s standards of living as I struck out on my own to save the needy rather than doing things God’s way. Such thinking demonstrates the truth of Proverbs 14:12: “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” Ironically, I now realize, by aligning myself with an organization that performed abortions, I had condemned myself to be part of the very thing I’d said I wanted to decrease.

Two things helped open my eyes: My employer increased pressure on me to improve my clinic’s finances by doing more abortions; and I was asked to assist in one of the procedures, where I witnessed, by means of ultrasound, an unborn baby, just weeks along, flailing, unsuccessfully against the suction tube that whisked the tiny body away.

The day I decided to leave Planned Parenthood, I drove immediately to the office of the pro- lifers who had both prayed outside my clinic all the years I worked there and shown genuine kindness and concern for me personally. I was loved from one side onto the other.

5- BARBARA OGG

Hi – I’m Barbara Ogg. It is exciting when women with dramatic conversion stories like King, Everett, McCorvey, and Johnson join the pro-life cause. But perhaps even more important for cultivating a pro-life ethic are ordinary women like me who have grown in understanding and conviction and, consequently, live out their pro-life philosophy quietly within their own sphere of influence. I’m like that, a retired child and adolescent therapist from Michigan.

I remember the furor that erupted in the news when Roe v. Wade was handed down. I recall Christians being “in an upheaval” for a time. But then things settled down, and most people, like me, seemed to accept the view that abortion is about a woman’s right to choose. As a college student I was assigned to give a presentation on Planned Parenthood. So I visited the clinic and interviewed the director. Everything was nice and clean, and the director was so friendly, offering me literature, free condoms, and a convincing rationalization for abortion. I was sold! I got an A on my presentation.

Looking back now, though I had attended church growing up and was taught that abortion was wrong and even believed it was wrong, I had been won over to the popular belief system that taught us not to judge others and that these were hard choices but none of my business.

A few years later, I became a Christian. But I didn’t embrace the pro-life view right away. In fact, when a Bible study leader showed a pro-life video, I grew angry, telling the leader the video was “all lies.” The leader didn’t return anger for anger but instead prayed for me.

Two years later, I had the chance to ask another pro-life friend hard questions about abortion and received good answers. My mind began to open. One question I asked stands out: “What about child abuse? Isn’t it better for a woman to abort a baby she doesn’t want than to keep the child and abuse him or her?”

My friend answered, “Abortion does not prevent child abuse; abortion is child abuse.”

Then, the truth finally hit me. My eyes were opened. These really were babies being killed. Soon afterward, I began to volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center.

My experience is one of a Christian community that bore with me patiently while I grew into my pro-life beliefs.