Last weekend, our team in South Florida hosted a baby shower for a mom who had scheduled an abortion … but she met a Sidewalk Advocate instead.
It was a divine appointment on the sidewalk: the right words, at the right time, spoken by someone who cared enough to show up. That encounter changed everything.
The Sidewalk Advocate encountered the mom, we’ll call her “Sofia,” at the Hialeah abortion facility with her boyfriend. Sophia was sad, but interested, and little by little she opened up. She shared that she had recently moved to the area with her 10-year-old daughter and became pregnant earlier that year. She was afraid and in denial, and her boyfriend did not want to keep the baby.
When Sophia initially went to the abortion facility, they informed her that she was 12 weeks pregnant and, under Florida law, they could not perform an abortion. She was referred to Washington, D.C. instead. Everyone around Sofia was echoing the same advice — that she should get an abortion. Desperate and without family in this new community, she visited additional abortion facilities and was determined to do everything possible to travel for the abortion.
That was until she met a Sidewalk Advocate who shared the help and support available to her. Sofia and the Advocate exchanged phone numbers, and then Sofia left because her boyfriend was pressuring her to leave. A few days later, she contacted the Advocate, and they went together to a pregnancy resource center that provided support during and after pregnancy. There, Sofia received the help she so urgently needed. Emboldened by this new family of support, Sophia told her daughter she was pregnant, and her daughter was overjoyed at the news!
Since that day, Sofia has stayed in touch with the Advocate she met that fateful day, texting ultrasound photos to her with the message:
“She’s here, thank God, and thank you all for being there on the right day and at the right time.”
Together, with her new sidewalk family and her daughter, Sofia will soon welcome her second daughter, Aitana.
This is just one example of the thousands of lives saved when an Advocate with the right training and the urgent help needed by a mom in crisis is present. Thanks be to God!!
Story submitted by Sidewalk Advocates for Life – South Florida
Will you help save more babies like Aitana from the tragedy of abortion? You can make a gift at sidewalkadvocates.org/donate before midnight on August 27 and see it instantly doubled by our summer match campaign!