"This adoption is irrevocable." With those words the judge pounded his desk and declared to the world that we were now the legal parents of a girl we had taken into our hearts and home almost two years prior. Nothing could have prepared us for the joy that we felt at that moment, as we became parents for the fifth time, this time by way of adoption.
        I am the last person I ever thought would adopt a child. I didn't even want children after my abortion over 20 years ago. I felt unworthy of being a mother. After working in an abortion clinic, where I participated in thousands of first and second trimester abortions, I was determined not to have children. But here I was, married with children, being asked to help a young mother and her baby, and I knew God wanted us to say "yes" to this child.
         We became involved in Ava's life simply to help her parents, who were struggling to care for her. She was only seven weeks old. An acquaintance's daughter was going to be entering drug treatment and we were asked to take the baby for 90 days. DCF was already involved as the baby had been born early and drug-addicted. We had no idea we would be adopting her almost two years later.      I cried the first time I saw Ava. She had been neglected and was so tiny, she still looked like a newborn. She cried a lot and was difficult to comfort. My usual ways of calming babies didn't seem to comfort her. She screamed hideously and thrashed in her crib. She was more easily startled than any baby I had cared for. This went on for months. Her intense screaming during the night left us frazzled and stressed out, wondering why she couldn't settle.
        Visits from social workers became part of our regular schedule, while visits with her Mom and Dad were sporadic. We hoped that her mother would take advantage of the help being offered to her, but the difficulties in her life seemed to make it impossible. She loved her daughter, but deep down inside I think she knew she couldn't parent her.
        After about 18 months, the courts decided that they would terminate the parental rights of Ava's birth parents. The plan then shifted from reunification to adoption, and the choice to adopt Ava was an easy one. By then she was calling us Mama and Dada, we thought of her as our daughter, and our four other children and extended family were besotted with her. We couldn't imagine life without her. It took another six months, but just after her second birthday, on National Adoption Day a few weeks ago, we were officially a family of seven.
        I know that we would not have adopted our daughter if we were not prolife. Being prolife has shown us that we are to do everything God asks of us, even taking in the children of others. Since joining the prolife movement about four years ago, I have been astonished by the lengths people go to in order to hep mothers and children. Adoption, fostering, and helping mothers in need is much more prevalent amongst my prolife friends than in my former prochoice world. When I worked at Planned Parenthood, there was no empathy for the child and no kindness toward a mother wanting to give birth to her child. Abortion was seen as the responsible choice for poor women, drug addicted women and victims of abuse.
       Forced birthers, fetus fetishers, women haters - all prolifers have had these words slung at them at some point. "You don't care about babies after they are born," the claim, "you only want to control women and force them to have babies." This rhetoric from proabortionists is a common refrain. I believed all of it when I worked for Planned Parenthood. I believed the lie of "every child a wanted child." I thought abortion was a responsible choice. I didn't understand that a child's worth wasn't determined by a mother's choice. I now understand that every life, every child in the womb, has inherent worth and dignity that comes from God. I am grateful and humbled that He chose our family as Ava's forever family.

We are now a family of seven.