“I’m scheduling an abortion,” Tawanda’s mother said as she picked up the phone. “Tawanda” had just informed her that she was pregnant, and at 16 years old, Tawanda was not about to challenge her mother’s authority.

When the taxi arrived at Bakersfield’s FPA abortion chamber last Tuesday morning, Tawanda’s mother stepped out first to dissuade the Christians on the sidewalk from talking to her daughter. “She’s got her whole life ahead of her,” Tawanda’s mother insisted, “and this will ruin her life. She doesn’t need a baby right now!”

The mother’s warning did not keep the Christians from offering literature to Tawanda as she stepped out of the taxi. She paused, looking like she wanted to take the information, but her mother quickly ushered her up the stairs and inside the abortion chamber’s waiting room.

After Tawanda was inside the building, Terri called out to her, saying “you don’t have to sign the papers! You’re going to have to live with this decision when your mom is dead and gone! Your baby is counting on you!”

Soon Tawanda’s mother came out on the balcony to make a phone call. Terri overheard her saying “she doesn’t want to have the abortion, but she has to!”

After their babies are aborted, women leave with aching wombs through a downstairs door, but when Tawanda and her mother exited the building several hours later, they came down from upstairs. Tawanda’s mother, who now appeared to be happy instead of angry, walked up to Terri exclaiming “she didn’t go through with it!”

Tawanda’s eyes were filled with tears as Terri handed her a baby gift. “Thank you for what you said to me,” Tawanda told Terri. “I kept hearing those words go through my mind, so I knew I couldn’t do it. My mom was the one who didn’t want me to have a baby, but now she says she will support my decision.”