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Option Ultrasound Directors

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From Abortion to Adoption: One Pregnancy Center Director's Journey

by Pat Layton

Surreal is the best way to describe my feelings as I walked the long, white hospital corridor leading into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of Tampa, Florida’s largest woman’s hospital. White walls, white ceiling, bare windows. An emotional battle raged in my heart and head. My husband and I walked the seemingly endless hallway together, just as we had so many years before.
This day, we were going to meet our soon-to-be new baby daughter. Our hearts were drawn to know what she would be like, but my thoughts were stuck in memories of another time when we had taken a similar walk, down a different corridor in this same hospital. Twelve years before, we had an abortion here.

As Mike and I rounded the corner of the NICU into the open nursery area, we were both trembling and gripping hands. The room was filled with babies. Most were laying inside clear plastic boxes with two little “portholes” in the front for the doctors and nurses to slip their hands through when caring for the sick and tiny babies. Some babies lay naked, too small for clothing. Tiny arms and legs were flailing. All kinds of tubes and wires were attached to them for monitoring their every body function. Some of them were stretched out on chest-high, podium-type tables covered with soft white sheepskin.

That is how we first saw her. A tiny baby girl. The nurses had named her Julianna: Juli for the month of her birth and Anna for the prophetic beauty of the name. Julianna had been born one month before to a 16-year-old girl at approximately 23 weeks gestation. Her birth weight was one-and-a-half pounds. She was just 10 inches long.

As I looked at Julianna, my mind reeled. Drastic changes were occurring in our lives lately. And yet here we stood about to become parents to this precious gift. It took all of the willpower I had to remain standing and not fall to my knees on the floor. I heard the sweet soft voice of God whisper to my heart “This, Pat, is what I create in a mother’s womb. This is what I have called you to fight for.” It had just been a few months ago that God had given me His next plans for my life.

Mike and I were the parents of two wonderful sons. Our 18 year old was a senior in high school, about to graduate in just a few short months. Our younger son was 10 years old, pushing hard into puberty. My life was a non-stop flurry of activity as I was running my own insurance agency while trying to be a wife and mother. In the middle of my personal and professional responsibilities, I felt very positive that God had called me to open Tampa’s first pregnancy resource center.

As I stood beside that tiny baby laying on white sheepskin, my closest friends were hard at work painting, wallpapering and preparing the vacant space that was to become the pregnancy center. We were set to open in just a few more months.

My life had come full circle from the abortion choice I had made years before. I will never forget the day that God gently revealed the truth to me about abortion. I was heartbroken as I confessed before Him the choice that I had made to destroy an innocent unborn child in order to cover my own sin. He immediately bathed me with His unsurpassed love, mercy and grace.

From abortion to adoption and now to the opening of a pregnancy center, God had shown Himself strong in my life. And He was about to do the same for Julianna. She came home from the hospital with us three months after her birth—no health complications and no health problems, in spite of what the doctors had said.

The story of Julianna’s miraculous life and her presence with me in the pregnancy center have helped many young girls make a decision for life for their own unborn babies. Julianna is now 15 years old (and the pregnancy center also). God continues to use her in the lives of many people. My husband Mike and I are constantly reminded that the truth of God’s Word, Psalm 127:3, has been fulfilled in our lives. “Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift, the fruit of the womb, His generous legacy.”

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