Eight years ago, Teresa* walked into Ohio’s New Life Clinic after taking a pregnancy test. As a senior in college, she couldn’t see herself as a mother nor as able to continue the pregnancy and make an adoption plan. She told her client advocate, Karen Anderson, she planned to abort.
Fast-forward to late autumn 2025. Anderson perused her Facebook feed and a memory from several years prior when she served as a volunteer client advocate and operated her own photography business popped up. Teresa had chosen life and Anderson had taken maternity photos of her and the father of her baby. Curious about what might have happened to the young woman in the time since the photos were taken, Anderson decided to see if the two could reconnect.
“My Facebook memory came up, and it was from when I took maternity photos of her that I posted for my business on my business Facebook page,” Anderson told Pregnancy Help News. “On a whim, I searched her name on Facebook and found her.”
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“The first picture on her feed was her wedding picture with the same guy,” she said. “The first time I ever met him was when they did their maternity photos, and it was very clear he was crazy about her. They were together with this absolutely adorable seven-year-old girl.”
Anderson decided to reach out to her former client and sent her a message via Facebook. She explained who she was, including the fact she had been the photographer who took the maternity photos. Teresa responded back, and what Anderson learned touched her heart.
“They [Teresa and the baby’s father] have been together since that day all those years ago, and she said, ‘We just got married,” Anderson stated. “I was tickled to see them still together!”
At the time Teresa first came into New Life Clinic, she was preparing to graduate from college, had a job already lined up, and had broken up with the baby’s father.
“She was abortion-determined at the time she came into the clinic,” Anderson recounted. “This guy had been a friend of hers all through college, and I think they were just seeing like if they could work as a relationship.” When Teresa came in, she was focused on the fact she had just broken up with him and didn’t see a future with him.
Anderson said she related to Teresa’s original fears and concerns after meeting with the college student all those years ago.
“So much of her story was similar to what my own story had been,” Anderson told Pregnancy Help News.
Anderson also experienced an unplanned pregnancy when she was a college student and had similar concerns to Teresa regarding her future. Anderson chose abortion, and after going through an abortion healing program, she often shared her own abortion experience with women who came into the pregnancy help clinic considering that path while she served as a volunteer client advocate. Now as executive director, she sometimes still meets with abortion-minded and abortion-determined clients.
“Sometimes just having that shared experience, you just see them relax,” Anderson said. “And usually, those conversations flow very easily because they do have questions and they do have concerns that they want to talk about.”
“Those are divine appointments,” she said.
Anderson believes the same is true about meeting Teresa nearly eight years ago.
“She had questions, she had concerns,” she said. “I remember her even saying to me, ‘How could I possibly go to my boss of my first job and go, oh and by the way I'm pregnant?’”
“When she left the pregnancy center after we had that first conversation, she still was very much on the fence about what she was going to do,” she added.
Anderson said the two of them communicated several times during the next few weeks, and after Teresa told the father of the baby about the pregnancy, his enthusiasm and support helped change her mind, and she chose life. However, Anderson said, the young woman was still concerned and nervous.
Teresa questioned whether she was about to make two huge mistakes, one, continuing the relationship with someone she may not have been in love with, and two, having a baby. But having the baby is what she did.
Knowing the couple remained together after nearly a decade of friendship and romance and even had a second child together brought joy to Anderson’s heart.
“I'm just so proud of her,” Anderson said.
“I'm proud of the life that she's made for herself,” said Anderson. “I'm proud of her for having the courage to continue her pregnancy when she was really, really scared. And I'm proud of the father of her baby, now her husband, who was a good man who loved her and loved that baby right from the start. So, I'm happy that she has had this beautiful life.”
Tweet This: Helping women who are unexpectantly pregnant and see abortion as their only option provides center director Karen Anderson with purpose.
“I know it was never ever God's intention that I have an abortion,” Anderson added, “but I did have an abortion, and I do love God, and so He can use even my greatest mistake, my greatest sin, to help others – that's how He works – so it was, in a way, a full circle moment for me [to reconnect with Teresa].”
Helping women like Teresa who find themselves unexpectantly pregnant, experiencing fear and seeing abortion as their only option provides Anderson with a deep sense of purpose. After serving as a volunteer client advocate, she became the clinic’s client services coordinator, and in 2022, she stepped into the role of Executive Director.
“Never in a million, billion years would I have ever expected I would be the director of a pregnancy center,” Anderson said. “But I just know I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I love my job.”
* A pseudonym
