According to a 2017 Stanford University study, the average American walks about 4,774 steps daily. That’s fewer than people in China walk—6,189 steps per day—but it still means the 330 million Americans collectively take around 1.6 trillion steps a day. Some are productive, some are playful, and some are merely ceremonial. 

At 11 a.m. on Jan. 18, five pro-life activists entered the Options for Women abortion center in Plainfield, N.J. They talked to the women in the waiting room and handed out roses with printed information about local pro-life pregnancy centers tied to the stems. Police arrived and told the activists to leave, but four of them chose to remain in the facility. Officers arrested them about an hour later.

Seven years after her abortion, Pat Layton was driving down an interstate highway in Florida when she burst into tears. The Christian talk show playing on her car radio featured women talking about their abortions. They mentioned their struggles with drugs, alcohol, anger, depression, and shame. Layton had experienced all of those problems and she was finally realizing that they stemmed from her abortion as a college student in 1977.

Austin and Bryan, Texas. Chattanooga, Tenn. Elkton, Md. Grand Rapids, Mich. Toledo, Ohio. Wichita, Kan. These are seven of the at least 20 cities where pro-life groups have taken over and repurposed former surgical abortion facilities. They are now crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life offices, or memorials. 

In C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, young King Caspian visits an island under his rule and discovers the territory embroiled in the slave trade. The Narnian king demands the lazy governor explain why the islanders have resorted to this “abominable and unnatural traffic in slaves.” The governor’s reply? “Necessary, unavoidable. … An essential part of the economic development of the islands, I assure you.”

Dan and Carol Learned were at church half an hour away when a tornado hit their Washington, Ill., neighborhood. As the congregation returned from the church basement, cell phones began to vibrate and buzz with updates from Washington. A neighborhood friend texted one of the Learned kids: “The whole street’s gone.”

A young woman in a flowy pink shirt sits next to her mom in the waiting room of an OB-GYN office in Midland. She’s quiet and seems a little nervous. Unmarried and 21 years old, she’s 32 weeks pregnant.