“It’s too late. I already did it. What am I going to do now?”
Regret washed over Catalina’s mind. She had seen her baby boy. But he was already gone.
Her abortion, at that time illegal in Chile, was not what she had expected. No smiling wait staff, state-of-the-art facilities, or doctors.
How did she get here?
“It was really important to me to go out dancing and have fun with my friends,” she later reflected. “But that had its consequences.”
After the procedure, Catalina sought to quell her regret—by drowning it.
“I tried to erase that image from my mind . . . I used alcohol, I used drugs,” she recounted. “I became a violent person, slightly aggressive, always on the defensive, thinking that everyone wanted to hurt me.”
Her sense of guilt was not merely psychological but spiritual.
“I told myself, ‘I have already earned hell for everything I did.’”
Yet in time, by God’s grace, Catalina heard of the Savior and placed her faith in Jesus Christ—tasting true freedom for the first time.
“I met Christ and accepted him in my life as my Savior,” Catalina shared. “To know Christ was to be born again and leave my old person behind.”
But forgiveness was just the beginning.
A Legacy of Life
As time passed, Catalina knew she couldn’t keep her newfound hope to herself. The Lord was stirring her to use her story.
“If God forgave me, if God made me a new creature, how can I not tell other people that they can have the opportunity to forget what they did and start a new life?” she wondered.
Years later, Catalina joined the Florece Prenatal Center in Iquique, a gospel-centered pregnancy ministry founded by ABWE missionaries. Armed with her testimony, today she brings young mothers the message she wished she’d heard long ago.
“Many women think that abortion is a quick solution, but it is not so, because it can cause many emotional, social, and spiritual disorders,” Catalina shared. But God “is a loving God, and he can forgive sins if we repent from the heart,” she related.
Since its founding in 2018, Florece—one of seven similar ABWE pregnancy centers—has witnessed more than 30 professions of faith, 40 births, and 700 Bible study lessons. Its workers, trained by Beautiful Feet International, are committed not only to prenatal counseling but also evangelism, discipleship, and connecting the vulnerable with Bible-teaching churches.
Yet vast, unmet needs exist worldwide in pregnancy ministry. Although the US accounts for only three percent of global abortions, an estimated 97 percent of pro-life funding stays stateside.
Enter Beautiful Feet.
A New Partnership
In 2023, Beautiful Feet officially became an ABWE ministry—paving the way to multiply the number of nationally-led, gospel-centered pregnancy ministries on the mission field.
“God is using pregnancy ministry to change women, men, and communities, to bring glory to himself,” says Melissa Heiland, Beautiful Feet founder and ABWE missionary. “We are thrilled to join the ABWE family of ministries to make an even bigger impact.”
Beautiful Feet, which has helped launch more than 90 pregnancy centers in 26 countries, joins the mission during a critical moment in the cause of life.
“2023 marks a pivotal moment not just for the US, but for the world,” said ABWE President Paul Davis. “The integration of Beautiful Feet into our global family amplifies our commitment to protecting the defenseless and communicating the gospel in love to those in crisis.”
But the impact is most deeply felt not globally but on a smaller scale—in lives like Catalina’s.
“When I was young . . . nobody told me about God—I never had the opportunity to hear, ‘Look, your life can change. You have the opportunity to be a mother. God can help you; trust him.’”
