The smell of fresh rain filled the air. Sun peeked behind the clouds. My sandals were muddy and soggy, from the rain on the dirt roads. Before me stood a row of one-story brick houses, mostly with no doors. Women sat in the entryways boiling potatoes over coals. Wooden vegetable stands stood 30-feet from the entryways.
The frantic gesture of a young teenage boy caught my eye as I jumped between puddles on the road. It was Dominic, a 14-year-old attending the pro-life training ca
mp for high school student leaders in rural Uganda. Responding to his call, I followed Dominic to a middle-aged woman sitting under her vegetable stand.
She stared unbelievably at a 12-week-old fetal model, resting in the palm of her hand. Anger was heard in her voice, as she asked me directly if I would help a pregnant school girl. “Yes, we’ll see what she needs and help her. What does she need?” I asked.
Next thing I know, she told me that she’d taken herbal medicine to abort her baby just a month before. Her baby was 12-weeks-old. Her man had left, making her unable to pay the school bills for her kids and instilling fear that she couldn't afford yet another child. She felt her stomach; the abortion had left her in intense chronic abdominal pain. But the pain went deeper, from the regret and guilt of having killed her own child.
I met this woman last May while training Ugandan pro-life student leaders how to talk to people about abortion. Tragically her story is common, especially in developing countries were roughly 7,318 babies are lost to abortion every hour, about one out of three pregnancies.
That's why we started Pro-Life Global, to raise up young leaders like Dominic who can reach women before they give into fear and choose abortion. The mission is huge, but with God nothing is impossible!