I’ve written before about my appreciation for Jackie Hill Perry’s book Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been. In this excerpt from the book, she shares a powerful prolife story. —Randy Alcorn

“I want an abortion,” my mother said. On the other end of the phone was her best friend. They’d known each other since they were four. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was president and when many women had babies they didn’t want or couldn’t afford to keep but with no money to stop them from coming, they let ’em grow anyhow. The thick white extension cord sticking out from the bottom of the phone kept getting caught between her wrist and her forearm. She moved the phone to the other ear to let it unravel. It was adding to the frustration she felt burning in her hands. “I don’t want the baby in this way.”

What she meant was, she didn’t want a baby with him. The coworker turned friend that became a lover. He was the “way” she never intended to bring another baby into the world by. Her first child, my brother, was already sixteen. She had him with a man she loved, and who loved her back. Her and my brother’s father actually went on dates, made plans to spend time together, and called each other names like “Baby” and “Sweetie.”

My father was a twenty-five-year-old man, with a beautiful face but who had no idea how to sit still and love anything that would make him consistent. Their relationship was too complicated to bring a child into, she thought, so why not remove it or should I say, me.

Her best friend listened. She could hear the irrationality in my mother’s argument. It being that abortion was to be considered instead of life. That removing me from the earth would make her own world better. Society had changed a whole lot since then but God was still the same. Abortion was still evil and had always been, even before the day “Thou shalt not kill” thundered out of God’s mouth. She wasn’t thinking clearly and her best friend had to help her see it for herself. She opened her mouth, and God spoke, “How do you know that God didn’t intend for you to have the baby in this way?”

Like a cold glass of water to the face, my mother’s eye widened, her heart beat truth into her chest, and the noise of death quieted down for a second. She had never considered providence and how involved it was with her womb. God, all-knowing, maker of man, creator of life, had orchestrated my conception. Though accomplished in sinful lusts, He had given me to her. He was forming me in her womb. Unbeknownst to her, He had chosen me before the foundation of the world to know Him. And no one—not my mother, my father, or even me—would get in His way.

Along with artists Sho Baraka and Propaganda, Jackie was part of a prolife video, “73–17: Life's Blueprint Unfolds in the Womb,” released last year by Desiring God and Humble Beast. And she also wrote an article addressed “To a Woman Considering Abortion.”  

For more on abortion and the sanctity of life, browse more prolife articles and resources, as well as see Randy's books Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims, Why ProLife? and ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments.