A ray of light shone through the stained-glass window and onto a veiled easel set up inside the dim church. In the vestibule, a handful of people waited — an artist, a mother of five, her sister and her daughter. As it grew close to the start of the holy hour, the group walked into the church and approached the illuminated painting in the sanctuary. 

The mother and the artist took a moment to pray before the artist pulled away a white cloth, showing the mother something she first had seen in her mind’s eyes many years ago — her three aborted children walking toward her through a field of wildflowers. The mother, Andie Pearson, put her arms around her daughter, Madeline, and her sister, Maria Treon, and the three women gazed at the work of art. 

Pearson was raised in a Catholic family in the small town of Northumberland, Pa. She fell in love for the first time right out of high school. Or at least, she thought it was love. “I let those feelings overcome me. It just took that one moment — that one moment just really changed my life,” she said. A few months after losing her virginity, Pearson realized she was pregnant.

The teenager was terrified, worried about her future and what her parents would think of her. When she finally got the courage to tell her boyfriend, he said he wasn’t ready to be a father. “That hurt a lot,” said Pearson. “Here’s somebody that I thought loved me and I thought I loved him. Why wouldn’t he want our child?”