by Julie Stepp

I can’t believe Roe v. Wade has been overturned. My whole life, abortion has been a thing, and Christians around me have been praying for the reversal of this landmark decision, made 22 years before I was born. I occasionally prayed that God would overturn Roe, but I did it kind of out of obligation, without thinking about it (or abortion for that matter) very much. Abortion to me was a distant and abhorrent evil only the “outsiders” dealt with, outsiders being people who were outside my circle, and outside my sphere of influence. My only hope to make any difference was to offer a feeble prayer that one day the decision that had made abortion legal in my country could be overturned…or so I thought.

One Sunday when I was 17, I was walking out of church and saw some baby bottles sitting on a table. Nobody had told me why they were there, and out of curiosity and my overwhelming desire to have a baby of my own (we’re talking about secretly climbing up to the attic to hold a baby doll to imagine what it would be like type of desire here) I walked up to the table and read the pamphlet, slipping a bottle or two out of the building to fill for the fundraiser. I read the pamphlet over and over about how the pregnancy center helped women and babies vulnerable to abortion, and I thought about how much I would like to save two lives – the mama and the baby – from destruction. I filled out a volunteer application, and the center accepted it, shy and slightly awkward as I was. I spent hours in the back room folding donated baby clothes, peeking my head around the corner every now and then to smile at the clients walking down the hallway. I thought they were “other,” “different,” “not like me,” and I wondered in the secret places of my heart if they would accept me because I was different. They were here because they were struggling with motherhood, and what did I have to offer anyway? Was I really able to help, despite my very sheltered background and lack of motherhood? I wondered…

Then off I went to college, dropping into the center to say hi every Christmas or spring break. When I graduated, I heard they needed an assistant manager for one of their locations, so I thought I’d apply. They accepted my application (now much less awkward and much less shy), and put me to work doing all kinds of things – fundraising, counseling, record-keeping. They decided to leave me home while the rest of the staff went to the Heartbeat International Annual Conference in Dallas (boy, they raved about Heartbeat conferences!), and while I was alone in the office preparing for a baby bottle fundraiser speech, the Lord spoke to me very powerfully about Esther and how she spoke up for her people to save them from death.

This verse in particular stood out to me: “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14, emphasis mine). I felt like this passage hit me in the chest with its weight, and so I started speaking at the churches who would allow me about what God had laid on my heart. I told fellow believers in the pews that now was a significant moment in history - the heartbeat bill had just been written into law in Ohio - and it wasn’t time to give up or turn the other way. It was time to speak up and bring that relief and deliverance to moms, dads, and babies in our community. If we didn’t, the results for us and our posterity could be very grim. Then I would close my speech with a call to action – “please pick up a baby bottle in the back and check out our mobile ultrasound unit in the parking lot.” I laugh as I write this – the pastors probably weren’t expecting such a hard-hitting prelude!

The executive director heard about my Esther speech and invited me to give it at the center’s biggest event of the year. We worked and reworked my speech to make it exactly what we wanted, and I added a little something to it this time. I remember standing there, looking out over the donors and friends seated at the many tables, and telling them that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the only way we were going to make abortion unthinkable and unwanted. I told them how no one who truly understood their value bestowed by their Creator would knowingly take the life of their own unborn child, another of God’s creation, and that we needed to take this Good News to our community because we had a chance in history to defeat this evil and save a generation. That night was one of my last at Elizabeth’s Hope Pregnancy Resources. The next week I moved to a new city and started my new job at Heartbeat International.

I kept thinking about what I had said. My own voice kept ringing in my ears. Now is the time. It’s only the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People around me would bring up the phrase “for such a time as this” and I would just smile. They had no idea what was going on in my head and heart.

Two years passed, and I got married and had my own baby, and then I felt a greater reason to help moms and rescue babies. Abortion must be eradicated. This was no longer something I just vaguely wanted. This was no longer a half-hearted prayer. And now I further understood how to help women. How to meet them where they were and how to offer them hope.

And then suddenly this was the moment. This was the moment that I didn’t realize how much I had been waiting for. I had found a way to help outside of what protection (or lack thereof) the law offered. I had found a way to help women. But the possibility for Roe to be overturned? We all held our breath, and waited, and wondered. Would the leaked decision of the Supreme Court hold true? Would they really overturn Roe v. Wade? And then it happened. I got the text, and I cried. It was finally official. The decision that had sent so many to their grave was finally overturned. The power to protect the gift of Life has been returned to its people.

I see God’s hand in my life personally to lead me to where I am at this moment. I see that He was intentional. I wonder why, and I am in awe that He would orchestrate for me to be in the pregnancy help movement right now. I am not on the sidelines looking at the landscape of our country and thinking “Oh that’s interesting – I wonder who I could give money to.” No, I wake up every morning and do something that actually makes a difference to moms and their babies. They are no longer “other,” “different,” and “unreachable” to me. They are real women that need help and are within my area of influence. This is what our country needs in this moment. We are the safety net for women who might believe the lie that they need abortion. It’s as if the chains of control have been broken, and Life has the freedom to reign.

When I go to the annual 4th of July festivities this year with my family and friends (on top of the hill beside my grandma’s old house), I’ll be thinking about how God truly is the one who frees the oppressed. He truly does answer prayer, and He aligns the events of history to bring forth His goodness. I’ll hold my wide-eyed son on my knee as he sees fireworks for the first time. And I’ll rejoice that for his generation, Roe will only be a story of the distant past. The oppressed have been set free. Liberty has come for the captives! Hallelujah!