I’ve Never Met Someone Who Says They Regret Their Child

When Idaho’s pro-life trigger law took effect after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many observers anticipated an “abortion tourism” phenomenon to occur in neighboring Oregon. And Planned Parenthood wasted no time preparing for the increase.

Within a month of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, the abortion corporation began work opening a new clinic in Ontario, Oregon – a rural Malheur County town on the Idaho border about an hour northwest of Boise.

Now positioned between AutoZone and a Cenex gas station, the new Planned Parenthood is the only abortion facility in the county. During its short time in operation, it’s already become a destination for abortion-minded women from Eastern Oregon and Idaho, as well as other states with laws that protect the unborn. According to updated 2023 numbers from Oregon Health Authority (OHA), 427 abortions were performed in Malheur County last year, 381 of which were for out-of-state residents. There had been no reported abortions in Malheur County in 2022.

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Isaac Sheldon, a U.S. Army veteran and father of six children (including one unborn baby) stands outside the Ontario abortion facility Tuesday through Friday most weeks. He’s a pro-life sidewalk counselor with the international Christian organization Love Life, which is committed to “uniting and mobilizing the church to create a culture of love and life that will result in an end to abortion and the orphan crisis.” Sidewalk counselors are pro-life outreach team members who urge moms to choose life for their babies (the term “counselor” conveys the life-affirming counsel they provide, and isn’t meant to imply that they are state-licensed mental health professionals).

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to deny the scientific, empirical evidence that what exists within the womb, the unborn, is a child,” Sheldon told Oregon Right to Life. “That it’s a stage in development for each and every human being. They’re fully human, fully alive from the moment of sperm-egg fusion.”

Sheldon said he started watching videos from pro-life speakers and groups after experiencing a religious conversion in 2018 and becoming a committed follower of Christ.

“From there, there was an interest that was spurred,” he said. But it wasn’t just theoretical arguments about abortion that piqued his interest. It was also a brush with abortion in his earlier life.

“I led my wife to being abortion-minded with our second child,” Sheldon shared. He said his wife was only twenty years old at the time, and the pregnancy was unexpected – their first baby was born only a few months prior.

Though the pair struggled at first with the timing of their second child, Sheldon said they “had God’s preserving hand on the situation.” Ultimately, they chose life.

Sheldon described his experience coming home every day to the love and affection of his children, including his second child, who now calls out “Daddy!” and runs to him with his arms outstretched.

“Those are things that would definitely have been stripped from me,” Sheldon reflected.

The thought process that Sheldon and his wife went through as they considered abortion isn’t uncommon. He said that, in his experience as a sidewalk counselor, many women seek abortion because of similar “timing” concerns.

“It’s not the right point in their life, whether it’s to add another child to the mix, or to add their first child,” he explained. “They’re not in a place in their life where they say, ‘Okay, now’s the right time.’”

“Every mother that I’ve actually engaged with that’s chosen life hasn’t sought any resources,” he said. “It wasn’t [a lack of resources] that was motivating them to do what they were there to do. It was timing.”

Sheldon said that fact is “unfortunate” because time is “the one resource that we can’t give anyone.”

Timing concerns may be a challenging objection to overcome, but Sheldon and his fellow sidewalk counselors aren’t discouraged.

So far, he and his team have helped eleven women change their minds about abortion and decide to keep their babies by sharing the Gospel message and emphasizing the intrinsic value of every human life.

And it’s not just the moms.

Sheldon said one abortion worker quit his job thanks to the pro-life presence outside the abortion facility – and another abortion worker who had been “on the fence” immediately picked up a sign and stood with the pro-life counselors outside after getting fired.

But Sheldon reflected that eleven babies saved is a small number compared to the many who don’t survive their mother’s trip to the abortion facility. For Sheldon, it’s the local churches that most need to step up and address the ongoing prevalence of abortion in their communities and even their congregations.

He told a story of a woman who was headed into the clinic but changed her mind after he interacted with her. During their conversation, he learned that she was actually a Christian worship leader.

According to a recent survey sponsored by the pro-life nonprofit Care Net, over 40% of women who have had abortions were church attendees at the time of their abortion. For many church-going women, fear of social stigma, or lack of trust in the ability of their church to help them, are contributing factors in their decision to abort.

That’s why Love Life encourages pastors to join the organization’s House of Refuge initiative to “prevent abortions from happening in your congregation… provide healing for those affected by previous abortions,” and “protect the unborn vulnerable in your community.”

“The church members all agree that even if a woman gets pregnant out of wedlock, or whatever leads to that unplanned pregnancy, that obviously we won’t gloss over repentance, but at the same time we’re not going to shame or guilt somebody to where they feel like the safest place to run to is the abortion clinic and not the church,” Sheldon explained.

For his part, Sheldon said he and his fellow sidewalk counselors attempt to emphasize “God, [the] humanity of the child, and the resources we provide” in the mere “fifteen to twenty seconds” that they “usually have to work with” when talking with moms and dads outside the abortion facility.

Ultimately, the moms must then decide whether or not to go through with their abortion. Unfortunately, he said, most do.

But in the short time that Sheldon has their attention, he tries to get them to think about how they’ll look back on this moment.

“I’ve never met someone who says they regret their child,” he said. “However, I’ve met many people who say they regret their abortion.”

LifeNews Note: Ashley Sadler is Communications Director for Oregon Right to Life. Oregon Right to Life Education Foundation is actively involved in connecting churches with pro-life pregnancy resource centers across the state, as well as creating and distributing localized resource guides to ensure that abortion-vulnerable moms and families throughout Oregon have access to life-affirming options.

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