Pro-life atheist to convert to Catholicism: ‘There is a God-shaped hole in my heart’

Kristin Turner, a pro-life activist and former atheist, talks with Prudence Robertson on a June 10, 2023, episode of EWTN Pro-Life Weekly. / Credit: EWTN Pro-Life Weekly/YouTube

CNA Newsroom, Jun 24, 2023 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Kristin Turner was an outspoken supporter of abortion who didn’t believe in God. She even used to speak at events on the topic “Why abortion is good for society.”

But now the 21-year-old activist is an ardent pro-life advocate who recently announced her intention to join the Catholic Church.

“There is a God-shaped hole in my heart,” she wrote on Twitter May 29. “I have tried to fill it with everything under the sun. But that’s not possible. I need him as much as he wants me.”

Turner said she came to her decision through “a lot of small things,” but her involvement in pro-life advocacy played a big part.

After suffering abuse by a high school teacher and thinking she had become pregnant by that abuse, she researched abortion further. 

After that, Turner said, she “had to reconsider” her pro-abortion position.

“I realized this act of violence against me is parallel to the act of violence committed against an unborn child who is not seen as fully human, and whose body is not respected, and therefore can be violently violated,” Turner told Prudence Robertson in a recent interview on “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly.”

“And when that happened,” Turner said, “I knew I had to do something.”

However, she said, “as a feminist … and as somebody who’s progressive and still is progressive, I thought there wasn’t a place for me in the pro-life movement.”

She decided to speak up for life anyway, first starting a pro-life group on her college campus, then founding her own nonprofit, Take Feminism Back. According to its LinkedIn profile, the group “exists to assist pregnant and parenting people in need. We also work to promote progressive social change that includes all people from the womb to the tomb.”

Since 2021, Turner has worked as communications director for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), an organization whose mission “is to achieve socio-political justice for the preborn by mobilizing anti-abortion activists for direct action and opposing elective abortion through a progressive lens,” according to its website.

Members have protested in front of abortion centers and marched in front of the Supreme Court. Turner and PAAU’s founder, Terrisa Bukovinac, were even incarcerated for four days in November 2022 after a “rescue” event at a Virginia women’s center.

The organization also uncovered potential illegal activity by a Washington, D.C., abortionist last year after discovering the bodies of 115 babies outside an abortion clinic.

It was through her pro-life work that Turner felt drawn to the Catholic Church.

“It was really through that work and seeing how fruitful an act of sacrifice could be and how transformational an act of sacrifice could be that drew me into the Church,” she said, “and just seeing the sacrifice of Jesus and what he was willing to do to humanize, to help save our lives.”

Turner also cited the number of Catholics involved in the pro-life movement who talked with her about the Church.

“There’s just many things that have brought me here, but the main one has been seeing how necessary it is to sacrifice for these unborn children,” she told Robertson.

Watch the full “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” interview with Turner below.

Catholic News Agency