Nearly seven years ago, Maddie Martinez was working a full-time job that she really loved and sought to move up in the company. These aspirations, she said, led her to strongly consider having an abortion after she became pregnant.
However, an encounter with a Love Box from the pro-life organization Embrace Grace convinced her to choose a different path.
Now in her early 30s, Martinez works as the group coordinator for the Hurst, Texas-based pro-life ministry Embrace Grace which creates Love Boxes for women facing unplanned pregnancies.
Inside each box is a personal invitation to a support group, stories shared by other mothers, a letter to give the young woman hope, a journal, a baby onesie that says “Best Gift ever” and A Bump in Lifebook featuring testimonies to offer hope to single moms, the website states.
Embrace Grace distributes Love Boxes to pregnancy centers located near churches that partner with the pro-life organization that offer support groups for women facing unplanned pregnancies. Embrace Grace’s 2021 Impact Report revealed the existence of 663 support groups across 48 states and seven countries.
The organization is one of several pro-life groups that have gained renewed national attention following the United States Supreme Court’s June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In Dobbs, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution did not contain a right to abortion, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
Following the Dobbs decision, several states have banned or added regulations on abortion. Pro-life activists like Live Action founder Lila Rose continue to stress the importance of providing for mothers facing unplanned pregnancies, no matter where they live.
While the legality of abortion in the U.S. has changed in certain states, the mission of Embrace Grace remains the same: to “inspire and equip the church to love on single and pregnant young women and their families.”
In an interview with The Christian Post, Martinez extolled the work of Embrace Grace that gave her the strength to ditch her plan to have an abortion and refocus her life.
‘Maybe I could do this’
“I was 24 when I got pregnant,” Martinez recalled. “I had graduated college, had a really great job and was pretty self-sufficient, but I wanted to keep moving up in that company that I was with.
And so, that’s why I really wanted to have the abortion.”
Martinez told CP that she wasn’t married at the time and “knew that if I was going to be a mom, that I was going to do it alone,” adding, “I knew that nobody else was going to parent with me.”
Having made up her mind that she was going to have an abortion, Martinez “needed somebody to take me to my appointment and pick me up from the appointment and it couldn’t be Uber” because “it had to be the same person signing off that they were going to take care of me.”
Martinez sought help from her sister, who is three years younger and already had experience with Embrace Grace. “She really tried to talk me out of it, but I was pretty adamant,” Martinez said, referring to the abortion that had already been scheduled.
Seeing that Martinez was determined to abort her baby, her sister sought help from Embrace Grace’s group leader Amy Ford, who co-founded the organization. Ford advised Martinez’s sister to “speak words of life over her.”
“You encourage her, and you tell her she could be a good mom,” Ford advised.
When Martinez’s sister explained that “she already did that and that’s not working,” Ford agreed to meet and present her with a box like those going to pregnancy centers to help moms “make a life-affirming decision for their [babies].”
Since Martinez lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex where Embrace Grace is located, Ford was able to meet and present her with a gift bag and offer her support.
The Love Box Martinez received, which was called the Love Bag at the time, contained all the items included in a typical package delivered to a pregnancy resource center except the addition of a onesie.
“She let me open it as if it was a gift and read the handwritten letter that was in there. She read it out loud to me, and just told me that I was a really great aunt, and I could be a … really amazing mom, too, and I just needed to trust that God had a plan for me,” Martinez said. “I abandoned the appointment. I never went.”
While nobody put pressure on Martinez to have an abortion, the few people in her life she talked to about the pregnancy said they would “support” her no matter what decision she made. Her sister was the exception, however, pleading for her baby’s life: “Don’t have an abortion.”
Martinez responded to her sister’s persistence by giving her an ultimatum: “Either you’re going to help me or you’re not.” Her sister ultimately assured her that she’d be supportive regardless of her ultimate decision. But she continued to “call things out in me and really helped me see that this wasn’t about an abortion, this was about me stepping into a greater calling,” she added.
Along with her sister’s insistence that she change her mind about abortion, Martinez said the book she received as part of the Love Box, titled A Bump in Life, also inspired her to cancel the abortion clinic appointment. The evening before she was scheduled to have the first abortion clinic appointment, Martinez “stayed up all night” reading the book because she “couldn’t sleep.”
The book contained stories of mothers who chose life after facing unplanned pregnancies.
“Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest thing to do, but I really was comparing my situation with the ones in the stories, and I just kept thinking, ‘Wow, if she could do that, then I could do that,’” she said.
“Some of them were homeless; some of them conceived out of rape; some of them were pastors’ kids and there was a lot of pressure on them. For me … that wasn’t the case.”
Martinez realized that, unlike the women in the book, “I did have a job, I did have a home, I did have a family who … I knew would be supportive.
When it got time for me to head over to the abortion clinic, I couldn’t do it and I didn’t want to do it.” She attributed her hesitancy about having the abortion to the book, which helped “plant seeds of … hope in me that I could be a good mom, that I could do this.”
“That book was in the bag that was gifted to me from my sister and so, I just picked it up and read it.
I think I could have read any other book, but I just happened to pick up that one and I really started to think maybe I could have a baby, maybe I could be a good mom; maybe I could do this. And then my alarm went off for me to get ready for the day and that was the day I was going to have the abortion. And I think in some ways, that book stuck with me throughout the day.”
Martinez told CP she was grateful to have her sister beside her at this point in her life. She knew that “once I said ‘I can’t do it,’ she wasn’t going to let me change my mind again.”
‘What the church is supposed to look like’
After deciding to continue her pregnancy, Martinez developed a relationship with Embrace Grace.
She credits the ministry with helping her to deepen her faith.
“Before really understanding who God was, I … just went to church on Sunday and I knew that I … felt like I was breaking all of the rules that had been set for me, like the Ten Commandments and the things that are said in the Bible that you’re not supposed to do, and I was doing them all,” Martinez shared.
“And then I would go to church on Sunday and ask for forgiveness and then start all over again. And so, it was just this … vicious cycle but I didn’t have a relationship with the Lord. I knew how to go to church, I knew how to pray, but that was it.”
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