Hope lives here Maria Lee has travelled a long way in the past 20 years. “Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to be a mom,” she told a media conference in Winnipeg in October. “I loved babysitting and carrying babies around. I couldn’t wait to have my own kids.” She paused, then told the crowd, “I’ve had five abortions.” She had her first abortion at 17, another when she was 19, and three more in her twenties. In between abortions, she had a baby boy. Her life was littered with bad relationships with abusive or addicted men. Maria was born in a maternity home in Winnipeg in the late sixties. Her parents eventually married and she was raised in Medicine Hat from the age of 6. It wasn’t a great marriage, she recalls. “There was a lot of drinking and my dad was often out of work and very stressed.” She recalls one Christmas Eve when she was about 11. Her dad was unemployed. He got angry with Maria and her younger sister and threw them out of the house. Her mom was upset with him and the two began arguing. Maria recalls looking in through the back door and seeing her parents fighting. “He told my mom she had to choose right now between him and us. She chose him.” The girls came back into the house but Maria says she never forgot that scene and she thinks that rejection stayed with her for years and probably contributed to her decisions about men and her abortions. She told her parents about the first abortion but told them the baby was handicapped. She never told them, or anyone else, about the others. Eight years ago, she met a man in a bar and started up another relationship. She found herself pregnant again and phoned the father to tell him. “I told him I’d have an abortion,” she recalls. “That’s how low I was. I just assumed he wouldn’t want the child.” He surprised her. He wanted the child and they got married. Their daughter was born nine months later. She didn’t tell her new husband anything about the earlier abortions. “He didn’t know what he was getting into when he married me,” she says. Four months after the birth of their daughter, Maria had an ectopic pregnancy. The doctor broke the news to her, warned her of the dangers and booked her for immediate surgery. “I told Rick (her husband) to go to church and pray for me. We weren’t going to church then but I was scared,” she says. Shortly after the ectopic pregnancy, Rick lost his job and times were tough. They began going to church and had two more children. One day in a Freedom in Christ class, Maria knew she had to tell Rick about the abortions. “It explained so much about me. My mood swings and my depression on Mother’s Day. It helped him to understand what was happening with me.” She heard that Lori Graham Baker (wife of evangelist Jim Baker) was coming to Medicine Hat to speak. Mrs. Baker, a post-abortive woman herself, runs Mourning to Joy, a post-abortion counselling ministry. “I went to hear her,” says Maria. “She pulled me out of the crowd. She knew how many abortions I’d had. It was amazing. She encouraged me to write my testimony and we began working together.” Mrs. Baker was encouraging Maria to start a Mourning to Joy ministry in Medicine Hat. Maria says she was in her room praying one day, asking God why he would want to use someone like her to bring healing to other women. “God told me to start a home for pregnant women,” she says simply. Home of Hope opened September 1, 2004. At a fundraising dinner last May one of the guests donated use of a house for the project. The Home of Hope has a married couple living on site and has space for three pregnant teens at a time. The house is full right now, says Maria. “We were painting the house in late August, wondering whether anyone would even approach us. We’re expecting two babies in January.” The house parents teach the girls to cook and clean and eventually help them with parenting. The girls must be in school, working or volunteering in the community and they can stay at the house until the baby is six months old and the mom “gets her act together,” says Maria. “I sometimes wonder why God has been so good to me,” muses Maria. “I have four living children. Some other post-abortive women can’t have any children. I feel a bit guilty sometimes.” It may be that Home of Hope is Maria’s way of expiating some of that guilt. Or it may be God’s way of showing her His purpose for her life. Either way, Home of Hope offers young, pregnant girls a chance to choose life—to turn a negative experience in their lives into a positive, life-giving and hopefully, life-changing experience. It’s a chance Maria never had.
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