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Lili’s Story
My name is Lili and I am from China. Thank you for allowing me to share part of my story with you.
My mom found out she was pregnant with her third child in 1976. At that time, if the government officers found out there were more than two kids in the family, that family would either be punished financially or officers would force an abortion.
Women could be taken from their homes and physically forced to have an abortion. Also, traditional Chinese culture of “valuing boys more than girls” strongly impacted people at that time. It was an honor for a woman to give birth to a boy. However giving birth to a girl brought shame on the family.
In addition, during this two child policy, it was popular to find out if they carried a boy or a girl, and aborting baby girls was very common. Under those pressures, my parents made the decision to abort me, but a miracle happened.
God saved me at the surgery table when the doctor suddenly became sick and had to leave before the abortion started.
In 1979, the Chinese government implemented the one-child policy which made the problem of abortion even more common. The public education system in China teaches that life does not begin in the womb and the culture in China overall does not value in life.
Abortion is looked at as “it is just what we do.” In China, pregnancy is a population control issue rather than a human being. The law does not allow single women to have children. But there is also very limited sex education in the country.
When I was single, before I met my husband, I found out I was pregnant with my boyfriend’s baby. I did not want to marry this man. I was also working as a teacher and I knew I would lose my job if they found out I was pregnant. I decided to have an abortion.
After I met and fell in love with my husband, we decided to get married. Right after we were married, we found out I was pregnant. Financially, we didn’t feel ready to have a child and the best choice seemed to be to have an abortion.
I felt so much shame, unsafe and angry about it, combined with loss and hopelessness in my life. After these abortions, I realized I had so much anger towards men and towards our government. I had no joy inside.
The worst thing is that after I did give birth to my first baby, Rebecca, I could not love her deeply. I was just raising her up as my duty. I also wanted to have a boy, so we became pregnant again. But again there was the one child policy at that time, so we struggled with whether we should keep the baby or have an abortion. There were risks to keep this baby.
My husband may have to pay a $40,000 fine, and be fired from his job. Plus the baby would have no ID and not be recognized as a person in China. We had also become Christians so we didn’t want to sin against God by having an abortion. We prayed. God gave us strength and comfort for my heart and sent people who helped us give birth to our second child, Yoyo, in United States.
When I came back to China, we had to hide our second child or we would still have the penalties of a second child. God also called me at that time to stand up for pro-life ministry in China and I began to work as the director of a pro-life pregnancy center in SW China.
After the Deeper Still retreat, we were able to say sorry to our daughter, Rebecca, and tell her she has other siblings in heaven. Deeper Still brought holy light into this deep place of our life. There are no more dark secrets in our family. May God bless this ministry of Deeper Still.