We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Berning a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Emily, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
December 1, 2018 was the day that our lives (and though we did not know it yet, the lives of thousands of people) changed forever. It was about 3 am and my husband, Nathan, and I were in Michigan at his grandparent’s house for a family Christmas party. Nathan is a night owl so he was up looking at facebook while I was sound asleep next to him. He came across a post asking people for advice. It said: “distant cousin good friends but sadly she muchly needs to get her life straightened out I went down family path she went down drugs booze and sex path leading to 3 abortions one being scheduled for next week”
He knew he needed to do something to try and help her so he reached out to the woman who posted the message and they began texting back and forth. She told him that her cousin was at a low point in her life. She had lost custody of her other two children, and they had become wards of the state. She also lost her job and had been evicted from her apartment. As a result, she was now living in a van, braving temperatures that could reach single digits at night. Having another child seemed out of the question.
Nathan’s instincts told him to adopt the baby. We had no children of our own, and we would gladly take in this precious life. Maybe if the mother knew someone else was willing to raise the child, she’d be willing to carry her baby to term. He told her cousin we’d like to adopt the baby and that if the mother canceled her appointment for an abortion, we’d send her a thousand dollars right away. He knew it wasn’t much, but it was most of our savings.
He explained that we had started a pro-life organization called Let Them Live. We were serious about trying to save every baby we could.
She texted her cousin and Nathan waited anxiously for the reply. When it came, his stomach churned. She said, “I don’t adopt it’s either keep or throw away.” He was fine with her not wanting us to adopt. More than anything, though, he wanted her to cancel her appointment and let her baby live.
He texted back: “$1000 if she cancels that appointment, I can send to her through PayPal or Venmo.” Again, he waited for her to share the message with her cousin.
Two minutes later, three little dots appeared on his phone screen to tell him a response was coming. “I will keep this ball of [cells] for 1250 I doubt it’s legit tho.”
Twelve hundred and fifty dollars was everything we had in our bank account, but he was willing to give it to a woman he’d never met before if it meant we could save her unborn baby from an abortion. He knew I would feel the same way, so he turned and gently nudged me from my sleep. After all, he was about to give away all of our money.
Only half-roused, I looked up at him with curiosity in my eyes. “Do you want to save a life?” he asked me. He then held up his phone. “It will cost us twelve hundred and fifty dollars, but this woman won’t go through with the abortion she has scheduled for Monday morning if we give her the money.”
I didn’t need to think about it. “Of course,” I said. “Whatever we need to do to save the baby.”
He kissed me on the forehead and turned his eyes back to his smartphone to respond. He told his new pro-life ally he’d gladly pay her cousin twelve hundred and fifty dollars if she would look up pictures of a twelve-week old fetus and then cancel her appointment.
After that, there was a bit of back-and-forth. The mom wanted to make sure we weren’t trying to scam her somehow. Nate explained that everything he’d said was completely sincere. Once again, he told her that we were part of the pro-life movement, and we were serious about doing whatever it took to help her and save the life of her unborn baby.
After several minutes of conversation through our mediator, he finally received the text he’d been hoping for:
“She says ‘Do you know if I can cancel on a Saturday or would I have to go in to cancel Monday ?'”
Nate breathed an audible sigh of relief. We were over-the-moon thrilled, completely ecstatic to know this baby had been saved. But the most exciting moment came a few days later when we received another text. It was an ultrasound picture of the mom’s seven-week-old unborn baby—a baby with a future.
It was so simple. We were able to save a life without changing a single law or picketing a single Planned Parenthood facility. All we had to do was ask what the child’s mother needed in order to choose life instead of an abortion, and then meet that need. In this case, it turned out to be a twelve hundred and fifty dollars. Compared to the value of a human life, that’s nothing.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using the levers of politics or protest to affect change. When we first began Let Them Live, we were focused on state and federal laws and policies. We were involved in raising support for Michigan’s heartbeat bill and had traveled to Washington, D.C., for the March for Life. We’d even traveled to Ireland for the fight to save the eighth amendment, which protected the lives of the unborn. We thought politics would be the way we would make the greatest difference in the pro-life movement. Today, after the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, these approaches are still incredibly important—some might even argue they’ve become more important—but because of Nate’s late-night texting adventure a few years ago, we now understand there is another way.
Several weeks after his encounter, we went to see the film Schindler’s List. It had been brought back to theaters for its twenty-fifth anniversary, and we had never seen it before. I’ve only cried during a movie a handful of times, and this was one of them.
The true story takes place in German-occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia during World War II, and revolves around Oskar Schindler, a coldhearted German businessman who appears to care more about money than people. But then something shifts. As the reality of the holocaust takes hold and Schindler witnesses Jews being gunned down in the streets, he begins using his wealth and influence to save as many lives as possible. His strategy is simple: employ Jews—lots of them—so he can to save them from the concentration camps. Saving lives becomes his obsession. He spends everything he has rescuing all that he can over the course of the war.
In the end, Oskar Schindler saves more than eleven hundred Jews. Though he is grief-stricken that he couldn’t save more, the Jewish workers in his factory recognize what he has done for them. They present him with a ring engraved with a quotation from the Jewish Talmud: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”
As we watched the final scenes of the film with tears in our eyes, we realized Oskar Schindler was onto something—something that would reshape Let Them Live forever. Schindler didn’t try to change the Nazis’ minds about the Jewish people. He didn’t try to affect change with protests in the streets. But he didn’t put his head down and ignore the plight of those who were suffering either. Schindler figured out a straightforward and simple way to save lives. He used his money to employ Jewish men and women, thereby saving them from the concentration camps. He paid what it took to save a life, and then he did it again and again and again.
We knew this was the approach we needed to take at Let Them Live. It had worked one time and we believed it could work with other mothers. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 73% of abortions happen for financial reasons. In other words, nearly three quarters of women who seek an abortion do so because they do not believe they have the resources necessary to provide for their unborn child.
That means more than seven out of every ten abortions in the United States can be prevented if those financial needs can be met. Imagine if every pro-life person in America decided to chip in and help. Imagine how many lives could be saved. Imagine how many moms could avoid the anguish of post-abortion depression and lifelong regret. Imagine how many stories of sadness could be transformed into stories of joy.
Behind every abortion statistic are real mothers—real women in desperate situations, many of whom don’t know where to turn for help. We decided that Let Them Live would focus on those women—all those who believe that, because of their financial limitations, they have no choice but to schedule an abortion and kill their unborn child.
In the grand scheme of things, money is worth so very little when placed next to a human life. As it was with Oskar Schindler, saving lives has become something of an obsession—and it’s one that seems to take hold of every donor, partner, counselor, and advocate who joins us in this work.
And amazingly, Let Them Live has attracted not only pro-life donors and supporters but also pro-choice donors and supporters. At the end of the day, despite LTL being a pro-life organization, people from all beliefs and backgrounds have been attracted to our mission. At the end of the day, it is people helping people.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
There was never a time in my life when I wasn’t pro-life. I guess growing up in a strong Catholic family, it was just a given that life begins at conception and abortion is wrong. So, I didn’t really think about the issue much growing up, at least not in terms of the cultural debate that was raging all around me. But that doesn’t mean I was apathetic either. Though I didn’t quite understand what abortion really was, I was a true believer from a young age (and I wanted to do my part to save as many babies as possible).
It wasn’t much of a stretch, then, when I began my junior year at Colorado State University and started looking for a pro-life group to join. I wanted to raise awareness of the issue on our campus. I wanted to talk to women outside of the local abortion clinics. I wanted to take a stand for what I believed in. When I attended my first Students for Life meeting, I suppose I wasn’t all that surprised to find there were only five or six students in the club. College campuses are liberal places in general, and Colorado State is a fairly progressive institution. What I was surprised to find, however, was that the Students for Life group didn’t actually do anything—I mean, other than pray together at one of the nearby Catholic churches.
I have nothing against prayer, of course. I love to pray, and I know how important prayer is. But I was disappointed to discover that my fellow pro-life students at CSU never organized events or participated in debates or did anything that might be considered activism. They never took a stand, never made their voices heard, and rarely left the church building. Needless to say, I was frustrated with the state of things.
So I spoke up.
I joined the group and started talking about how we needed to be a presence on campus. To change minds and hearts, we needed to be there, participating in the life of the school and making our point of view heard. I wasn’t sure what I expected from the group. I suppose I thought they’d be excited to get out of the church for a change. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead, they all quit.
Yes, I singlehandedly destroyed the Colorado State University chapter of Students for Life. Like I said, there were only five or six people in the club to start with, but I managed to scare them all away. I don’t think anyone was mad; they just weren’t interested in becoming pro-life activists. They had been content to pray at church and occasionally outside of the Planned Parenthood building right next door, and they could see I wanted the group to be something more. And so, they handed me the reins and left me to it.
Suddenly, it was just me. I was Students for Life. I restarted the group from scratch, and within a few weeks, I had recruited enough students that we began holding our own events on campus. Early on, we held a tabling event exploring whether federal tax dollars should be rerouted from Planned Parenthood to federally qualified health centers. I remember, after the event, some pro-choice students came up to me and told me I had changed their minds on the issue. There was even a Planned Parenthood volunteer who said she was now in favor of routing money to federally qualified health centers. I knew, in that moment, I had found something. I don’t know if I would have identified it as “my calling” at that point, but I loved fighting for the pro-life cause.
As president of our school’s Students for Life chapter, I connected with David, a regional coordinator for the Leadership Institute. David, who’s still a friend to this day, helped me grow our little group into one of the best and most effective college pro-life groups in the region. Within a few months, being a pro-life activist soon took hold of my identity. My work on campus made me a regular feature in the student newspaper. I became known as “Pro-Life Emily,” and I didn’t mind one bit.
I had gone to CSU for a biology degree, on route to veterinary school and then a career as a veterinarian. For as far back as I could remember, that had been all I had wanted to do. Veterinary medicine runs in my family; my grandpa was a vet until he retired, and my uncle is a vet too. And I love animals, and so I was going to be a veterinarian—that is, until I became consumed with the pro-life movement. Students for Life became, well, my life.
Instead of spending my time studying, I spent my time organizing events and raising awareness. By my senior year, my grade point average had dropped to getting-by status. It was hard to focus on biology when I was so captivated by my new mission in life. Instead of reading (all of) my assignments, I read books on apologetics, bioethics, and philosophy. I didn’t know what exactly I would do for work once I graduated, but I knew I wanted to spend my career being a pro-life warrior. Needless to say, my parents were a bit concerned—and yet they supported me; they could see the determination in my eyes and hear the resolve in my voice.
I wanted to save as many unborn lives as I could, and I knew one of the ways to bring real change to the world was to convince my generation that life in the womb is precious and should be protected. I looked at my campus as a sort of mission field, believing that for every mind I changed, an untold number of babies would be rescued from the abortion clinic. To that end, I invited Josh Brahm from the Equal Rights Institute to give a lecture on campus. CSU had made grant money available to student groups for events like this one, and so I applied. I was shocked a few days later when I received an email from the administrators of the fund rejecting my application. They cited the subject matter as problematic: they told me in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want a pro-life speaker on campus.
The Diversity Grant, as it was titled, was specifically designed to bring a variety of speakers to campus to expose students to different and competing ideas. On a campus that leaned far to the left, and with the vast majority of students and faculty parroting the same, tired pro-choice arguments, Josh Brahm’s talk would have contained exactly that—different and competing ideas.
It was clear from the email I received that this decision wasn’t about scheduling or procedures or funding; it was about the school’s blatant opposition to the pro-life position. I knew that as a student in good standing and the president of a registered student group, I had the right to access Diversity Grant money for its stated purpose. So I did what any passionate college student whose First Amendment rights were being quashed would do. I sued the university.
I got in touch with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told them about what had happened, and they sued the school. Thankfully, the case never made it to court. ADF was able to settle the entire issue with a strongly worded letter. The email I had received from the administration had clearly revealed the inherent bias in their decision-making, and school officials knew they had no choice but to reverse their decision and grant my request for funding. Shortly after they did so, CSU dissolved the Diversity Grant. It had been nothing more than a slush fund to bring left-leaning speakers and events to campus. It seems that once I made it clear they’d have to use the money to bring actual diversity to campus life, school administrators and faculty were no longer interested.
Needless to say, I became very passionate.
I knew that I wanted to pursue the pro-life movement in some way. Once I graduated and met Nathan and we started Let Them Live, that was the start of it all!
We started raising money from friends and family and slowly grew our two-man operation that helped one mom financially into an organization that now has over 50 staff, hundreds of volunteers and has helped over 800 women choose life!
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
So many! Running a nonprofit that is 100% dependent on donations can be tricky at times. You have to anticipate costs while working extremely hard to meet fundraising goals. It is a delicate balance between maintaining the status quo and investing money into the growth of the organization.
We have never missed a payroll and have never had to turn any qualifying moms away from our financial support but we have come close! Those are hands down the most stressful times as the president and co-founder of a nonprofit. Not only is the weight of the mission on my shoulders (making sure we can pay bills for our moms and continue taking on new moms to support) but also the weight of our staff’s jobs.
During these times, you have to re-evaluate where you are as an organization and consider if maybe you tried to grow too fast, maybe you made some decisions that were more exploratory rather than essential. Then you have to make some cuts. Those are never easy but we always have to look at the organization as a whole and its longevity.
These are also the times when it is good to reconnect with your donors and remind them of the importance of the mission!!
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
The best advice I can give is to:
1. Delegate tasks- if you are doing everything, you will get burnt out (I have had that happen before and it was not good for me or anyone!). In order to be successful you have to be able to understand the things that only you can do vs. the things that you can have others help you with. If you do it all, your battery will slowly start to drain and we all know what happens when our battery drains and we don’t plug it in. You are no good to you, your company, organization, staff, etc if you aren’t giving your best! Take a break and delegate so that you can give your best!
2. Establish rapport- Check in with each person individually; build relationships with your staff! They are the ones you believe in you/your mission! A phone call to say hi or a quick note of thanks can go a long way with maintaining morale!
3. Share wins- Include your team in the wins you experience! Whether they are big or small and whether or not they have anything to do with staff members directly, share it! We had a donor increase his monthly gift from $100 to $1000/month! I shared that with our whole team! It is a huge mood boost for everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://letthemlive.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letthemliveorg/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetThemLiveOrg
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/let-them-live/mycompany/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/letthemliveorg
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LetThemLive