Author: Katie Stevens

Why I am Pro-Life.
Why I work for LIFE.
I work to preserve life because life is precious, all life is precious.

I never want another woman to find herself in a room surrounded by people pressuring her to end her baby’s life. I had been married for a few years and we were expecting my first baby. The OB ran the usual tests and one of them came back . . . suspect. He sent me to specialists at Eastern Virginia Medical School. My husband and I went for the appointment. They confirmed my baby had Down Syndrome, Trisomy 21.

The “specialists” at EVMS painted a grim picture of what her life would look like. What our life with her would be like. How she would need extra care. She would not learn at the same pace as the other children and would need special education. How she might never learn to care for herself. They told us that her life span would probably be 50 to 60 years and that she would most likely outlive my husband and me and would need someone to care for her. She would have been our first child – so we would have to consider how we could provide for her beyond the end of our lives. Someone suggested we would need to have other children to ensure there would be someone to care for her beyond our life.

These experts kept telling us the extreme difficulties we would face if we kept her. Not once did they say that there was help out there for families of Down Syndrome babies. Not once did they offer to connect us with resources to help us. Terminating the pregnancy was the only route they suggested.

Emotionally I was spiraling out of control. I needed someone to tell me I could do it – that I could care for her. That everything was going to be alright. That there were people and organizations out there that would provide support. I needed to slow down and process.

My husband was convinced that we needed to terminate our daughter’s life and every one of the “experts” was pushing for the “logical choice” to terminate my baby’s life. I felt alone and pressured to end her life. And I had no time to make the “decision,” it was imperative that the decision be made immediately.

I am ashamed, and I live every day regretting the decision I made.

More than anything, I want women who are afraid to have the help and hope they need to choose life for their baby.

I think if there had been a safe place to process and strong Christian counselors to help me slow down and process, to remember the goodness of God, to find the support I would need to care for my daughter, I would have made a different decision.

I want other women who are afraid and are only hearing how they should end their baby’s life to hear that they are able, that God can strengthen them and provide for them and their baby. I want them to know that God created the baby they are carrying, and He has a plan. I want them to hear the truth, and I want the truth to drown out ALL the lies and speculations the world and the “experts” are telling them.

I pray daily that God would open a way to provide counseling for women like me. Women who are sent into the “specialist’s” office, where the only thing they will hear is that they should terminate their baby’s life.

I am pro-life.
I work to save LIFE.
I work to preserve life because life is precious, ALL life is precious.