When Dr. Beverly McMillan allowed herself to speak Christ’s name, something changed inside of her.
An abortionist in Mississippi at the time, McMillan said her life had been troubling her deeply and she began reading a book that encouraged her to repeat the Bible verse, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Sitting in her car one day, she finally said the verse to herself and immediately felt the “presence of Jesus Christ.”
In a new interview with Live Action president and founder Lila Rose, McMillan shared how God changed her life, led her to stop aborting unborn babies and become a voice for their lives.
McMillan told Rose that she was raised Catholic but, like many young adults, abandoned her faith in college.
During her medical residency in 1969, she said she came into contact with abortion patients for the first time. At the Chicago hospital where she was working, McMillan said they treated a number of women who suffered botched abortions.
“These women were coming from the back alley abortion mills of Chicago,” she remembered. “They weren’t talking because the abortionists falsely told them that if they admitted to having an induced abortion they were going to get into legal trouble. Not true. The abortionists … were protecting themselves.”
Seeing abortionists treat women “like trash” made McMillan want to help them. So, in 1973, as a new OB-GYN she began offering abortions herself.
In 1975, she said the abortion facility Family Health Services in Jackson, Mississippi, asked her to begin doing abortions for them, so she did. McMillan told Live Action that she aborted at least 500 babies while she worked there.
But she was not happy with her life. McMillan said she felt miserable and began having suicidal thoughts; so she bought a book called “The Power of Positive Thinking.” In the first chapter, she said the author recommended that readers repeat the Bible verse “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” ten times every day.
But McMillan resisted.
Then in early 1976, on a cold, rainy day, she “finally just gave up and said, ‘Okay I’ll say that darn thing.’” That was the moment when God began changing her life.
“I was in my car in the doctors’ parking lot at Baptist Hospital when I finally gave up and just said, ‘Okay I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ At that point, I had a remarkable experience. The presence of Jesus Christ in the back seat of the car behind my right shoulder like the hound of Heaven jumping out of the underbrush,” she told Live Action.
McMillan went back to the abortion facility, but the abortion of a 12-week unborn baby boy soon afterward prompted her to quit.
“It was a little boy, you could easily tell that,” she remembered. “Off by itself was this little arm with this perfectly formed bicep muscle. And I had this cha-ching moment.
“My youngest son was, I guess, about 3 years old at the time and he was trying so hard to keep up with his big brothers. And he would go around saying, ‘Look at my muscle! Look at my muscle! I’m strong enough!’ And something connected and just this wave of sadness came over me and I just thought, you know, ‘What am I doing?” she continued.
McMillan began going to church with her children and quit her job at the abortion facility.
Then in 1980, she said someone invited her to a Christian doctors meeting to assist with a new pro-life group. That prompted her to rethink the remaining pro-abortion views she had, namely abortions in cases of rape, unborn babies with a disabilities and the mother’s health.
“I had to rethink a lot of things,” she said. “Medical problems in the mother, I had never encountered at that point, nor have I since, a woman that needed to have an abortion for her health and life.”
Since then, McMillan has been active in the pro-life movement. Along with sharing her personal testimony, she also offers a message of encouragement and mercy to post-abortive women and abortion workers.
“Abortion is not the unforgiveable sin and I know that,” she told Live Action. “I regret what I did but I’m at peace with God’s forgiveness and he’s given me the grace to forgive myself. I would just say, ‘Believe that.’ Jesus said himself, he didn’t come for the righteous. He came for us.”
