Abortion is one of the biggest policy debates in the U.S.

Some say abortion is healthcare, the right to choose, and a woman’s choice to determine what she would like to have inside her body. Family planning.

Many others say it is a brutal war on the most defenseless human beings, a methodical murder of the innocent, a mass killing of holocaust proportions occuring in, supposedly, one of the most civilized and tolerant societies in history.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 46 million Americans have been killed by abortion since 1970. Many estimate that figure to be even higher.

In no other instance in the medical community would the termination of a healthy life be considered ethical or legal. Still, many Americans insist that abortion is heathcare.

One Middle Tennessee man felt extreme sadness for these murders of the unborn, and in 2015 Scott Hord said God directed him to “engage abortion.”

So he did.

Hord, who pastors Christ Life Community in Smyrna, does not engage abortion in capitol buildings or courthouses. He does not make a stand only on social media or online forums. Rather, he takes it to the streets. Standing outside in the cold, or the heat, or the rain each Tuesday and Friday morning, he speaks with women who seek to end their pregnancies, heading toward the entrance of  Middle Tennessee’s primary abortion provider, Planned Parenthood in Nashville.

“I keep to what God’s calling me to do, which is to engage the moms,” Hord said. “They are killing babies five days a week, eight hours a day,” he said of Planned Parenthood, and he wants someone from Operation Saving Life, the group he founded with the objective of giving babies a chance at life, to eventually be present outside of the facility during all open hours, available to speak to mothers and to present the case for life.

“We’re trying to generate volunteers. Our goal is to be there 40 hours a week,” Hord said. “It’s a tragedy,” he says about the millions of lives lost.

He said he wasn’t quite sure what to say when he first decided to speak with the mothers considering abortions, but that he “needed to be humble and loving and, at the same time, truthful.”

At times, a discussion of God’s love for all lives causes the mother to reconsider having an abortion; with other women, Hord brings up the idea that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to limit the population of non-whites in America and her now-controversial connection to and partnership with the eugenics community.

Hord said the responses were all over the place—some were kind to him, many ignored him, some made threats towards him. Then one day, a young girl engaged in conversation with him and agreed to leave the abortion facility; she eventually gave birth to a healthy child.

Hord said that mother’s decision to have her baby gave him “great joy and confidence to go back and do it again!”

Since then Operation Saving Life has recorded 186 confirmed saves, Hord says, 186 babies born due to their sidewalk discussions with mothers.

Hord and others involved in OSL have come to realize that often the circumstances surrounding a mother who desires to have an abortion can be dark, and the group aims to help meet the physical, mental, relational and spiritual needs of the whole family, beyond the decision for the mother to have the child. The group seeks volunteers to not only help save the lives of the unborn, but to support that family on an ongoing basis.

Hord says the conversations outside of the Nashville abortion provider can be taxing, confrontational at times, but he believes that what he is doing is right and important. He says that he gets all the strength to continue his quest when his conversations help lead to a baby being born rather than killed.

He tells of the recent story of Laterrica, who traveled to the Nashville Planned Parenthood office seeking an abortion.

Laterrica “is pregnant right now . . . having a baby in January,” Hord says. “I just have to see her at church on Sunday to get motivation.”

While these success stories inspire him and the other Operation Saving Life volunteers to keep going, they speak with far more mothers who go forward with their abortion, as opposed to those who decide to continue carrying their children.

“We might get one or two rescues per month,” Hord says. Each time he travels to Nashville on this mission he may speak with “probably three or four abortion-minded people. . . . We may save 1 out of 40.”

But instead of becoming burdened by the lives that ended, says Hord, “I focus on the one, and just let her know that we love her.”

The Operation Saving Life founder says that now a lot of churches in the area are backing the group, supporting the mothers, throwing baby showers for them, remaining involved in their lives, celebrating birthdays with the children as the years go by.

“Seeing those babies gives me enough joy to keep going,” Hord says.

He says he does not intend to necessarily be involved in efforts to legislatively de-fund Planned Parenthood or to fight the matter using the legal system. He just wants mothers to consider having their babies, and will continue ministering outside of the Nashville abortion clinic on Tuesday and Friday mornings as long as he is able.

___

Christ Life Community Church meets in the Smyrna Boys & Girls Club, 198 Culbertson St., Smyrna. The church holds Sunday worship at 10:30 a.m. For more information, visit christlifesmyrna.com.

For more information on the mission of Operation Saving Life and volunteer opportunities, visit operationsavinglife.org.

___