Jill King came to Lakes Life Care Center in 2010, when her mom was a volunteer. At the time, King was running a childcare center. When Lakes Life Care Center lost its director, King’s mom told her to join, which King rejected.
King told “Practicing Catholic” host Patrick Conley on the program that will air at 9 p.m. Oct. 18 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM, “Long story short, it was definitely a nudge from God to get me here. Thirty years ago, I took a friend to an abortion clinic to get an abortion. This has been my way of paying it forward after dealing with that.”
Lakes Life Care Center offers pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, prenatal parenting classes and STI testing and treatment, said King. But the most important thing the center offers, King said, is love and support for women and families.
When talking about her past, King said, “Knowledge is power. It wasn’t something as a young person we talked a lot about. I don’t remember hearing a lot about being pro-choice. That’s just what everybody did until you learn more about development and what the sanctity of life means. I was pro-life before coming here but it reaffirmed that and taught me so much more about development and the harm that abortion does to women.”
King said she saw this harm in her own personal life and in her friendship with the woman King took to the abortion clinic.
“It’s something that women can’t erase from their brains,” King said. “If I can play a part in saving women from that pain and destruction, it’s something that I want to do. That’s my goal here. I share my story if it needs to be shared. God doesn’t always want me to share it. But being here and just hearing the women’s stories and being able to find those resources they need so they can make a different choice.”
When King first started at Lakes Life Care Center, a young woman came to the center with a bad fetal diagnosis. The ultrasound showed that the child wasn’t going to live. She came to Lakes Life Care Center saying she didn’t want to abort, but that everybody in her life told her she should. Her husband told her, “If you have this baby, I’m leaving you.”
“That child is in middle school now,” King said. “She was born perfectly healthy. … Doctors aren’t God. They don’t know. It was some weird anomaly. The baby was perfectly healthy, but they pushed her right up until the last couple of months of her pregnancy to abort that child and that little girl is here and she’s healthy and thriving. To me (that) was a miracle and we were so grateful to be here for her because I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t come to us.”
To hear more from King and her time at Lakes Life Care Center in Forest Lake, tune into “Practicing Catholic,” which repeats at 1 p.m. Oct. 19 and 2 p.m. Oct. 20.??
The program also includes the concluding testimony of Todd and Anne Olund, who talk about the journey through chemotherapy and a leukemia diagnosis. Also, Sarah Kostick dives into how understanding science can deepen appreciation for God.?
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the program can also be heard after it has aired at archspm.org/faith-and-discipleship/practicing-catholic or choose a streaming platform at Spotify for Podcasters.??
