Why I'm Protesting Planned Parenthood

The following is a post by Terry Schilling, a pro-life activist from the Quad Cities. Terry is currently a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he has served as president of the student body. Terry also worked as the Iowa youth director and later as the Eastern Iowa field director on the Brownback for President campaign.

Ever since I was a little kid I have been involved in the pro-life movement. I remember getting in fights with other kids in my kindergarten class because their parents voted for Bill Clinton. I would go protest Planned Parenthood with my mother. I would go to the prayer vigil outside of abortion clinics on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I would always get into abortion debates during school, I even chastised a teacher for supporting abortion in front of my class. The entire time that I was doing this, I never thought that I would have to personally choose life. How wrong I was.

My senior year was going great. I had a 4.0 for the first semester, my football team went to the semi-finals, my family was expecting our 8th sibling, and to top it off I had a wonderful girlfriend. However, the New Year would bring a huge change to my life. It was in mid-January that I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant. I can't speak for her, but I was scared out of my mind. I kept thinking, "I am not ready to be a dad. I can't provide for a family. I can't stop everything that I am doing and change all my plans and dreams."

My girlfriend and I went through everything that scared teenagers go through when they have a crisis pregnancy. Depression, fear, sadness, anger and a whole lot more. But the one thing that I think that we experienced that most people don't try to experience, was Hope. I could not have experienced this without the support of my loving and wise parents. They helped me plan things out. They helped me sort through all of my options. They brought up adoption, they brought up going to college and paying child support and seeing the baby as much as I could. They brought up getting married, and they brought up raising the baby as friends.

There were so many options that I had not thought of because I was scared out of my mind and couldn't think straight.

My girlfriend and I decided that in order to choose what was best for our child we needed to discern what God wanted. We went on a full day retreat of prayer and discernment with a pastor of ours that we both trusted.

After this retreat it was clear to both of us that the best thing for our child was to give him/her two loving parents who loved each other and him/her unconditionally. We both decided that we were not ready to get married and that it would be best to give our baby up for adoption.

We talked to friends, family and even went through Bethany Family Services to try and find a couple to adopt our baby. After looking at hundreds of portfolios, and meeting with half a dozen couples, we finally found the perfect couple to adopt our baby.

To make a long story short, it came to be the day of the delivery. And I thought that I was scared when I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant. All these thoughts came into my head, What if there are complications? What if she gets stuck? What if something happens? I just started praying. That was all I could do.

Finally she was born. I was in such shock that I can't remember how much she weighed or how long she was. I just know that she was perfect. Her head looked kind of weird at first but I asked my mom and she said that that was only temporary.

We took our new Grace back with the nurses and left my girlfriend to rest. I will never forget how much Grace cried. They let me help clean her up and they put her under a heat lamp. She still kept crying terribly. It was then that my mother took my hand and said, "Terry do this." She guided my hand to the bottom of her feet. She stopped crying and just looked up at me for what seemed like forever.

When it all came down to it, my girlfriend decided that she could not go through with the adoption. I place no blame on her whatsoever. It was a very hard decision for me to accept and I didn't have Grace growing inside me.

Grace is now 2 years old and lives in Michigan with her mother. I get to see her on my breaks from school. I have her now for a whole month before I go back to school. She is a joy. The thought of not having her brings an emptiness that I cannot handle.

That is why I am protesting Planned Parenthood. I want to put an end to such an evil organization that wants to destroy the lives of children like my Grace.

I plan on training Grace pretty soon in anti-abortion combat. Basically that means that I am going to start bringing her to protests, praying with her for the end of abortion, and teaching her abortion dialog. You know the usual.