06/18/2026
What a beautiful testimony of the Lord’s redeeming and restoring work! We’re so honored that the Lord allowed us to be a part of Jenifer Barron’s story and witness how He turned what Satan meant for evil into abundant good! From being a post-abortive woman to a birth mother to a single mom, we were so blessed to walk alongside Jenifer through every chapter of her story 🤍🤍
#17—Jenifer Barron Yates
Local Cup Location: Square Beans Coffee, Collierville
Everyone meet my wonderful new friend, Jenifer Yates! Listening to her story I could see the thread of God’s hand throughout and I’m so excited for all of you to read about it. I hope it touches your heart like it did mine.
At Life Choices of Memphis, it is our mission to educate and empower women to choose and cherish life. While it is our hope to save babies, our main focus is the mom in front us. We are here to love the single mom, the birthmother, and the post-abortive woman. And as a Life Choices client herself, Jenifer has been all three.
Conceived in r**e, Jenifer’s mom chose life for her and throughout her entire life, God has had his hand so clearly on every part of Jenifer’s story.
Jenifer recounted to me that her childhood was filled with physical and verbal abuse brought on by her stepfather. When she was 14, she made a decision to follow Christ and though her road ahead was not easy, Jesus was with her every step. Not long after, she also became a victim of r**e when a boy followed her home from a party and took advantage of her.
At 17, she started dating a boy whom she later found out had been the same boy that took advantage of her 3 years before. He ended up taking advantage of her again, and this led to a season of darkness and during this time, she found out she was pregnant and went to Planned Parenthood to have an abortion.
She remembers being in Planned Parenthood and though the lights in the building were bright, it felt physically dark and no one in the building would make eye contact with each other. When she sat down with the Planned Parenthood counselor, she asked if what was inside her of her was a baby. The counselor responded that it was not a baby, but instead it was a fetus that could not think or feel.
Jenifer chose to have an abortion, and she said that she was scarred in ways she didn’t understand. She entered college with a lot of problems and did not have a strong identity in Christ. She pushed the abortion aside until one day in college it came back to confront her.
In a debate class, she was giving a pro-choice speech on abortion and then came the first sign that something was wrong. When she received her grade back, she was given a high B. Knowing she delivered an excellent speech, she went back to the professor to confront him. He told her the reason he marked her down was because she used the word “baby,” and if she was going to make a pro-choice argument, she couldn’t use pro-life terms.
This stopped her in her tracks, and she immediately went back to her classmates to ask if she had said this, and they confirmed what the professor had told her. This is when her panic attacks began.
Fast forward to a little later in college, she had become so miserable and unhappy that she began contemplating su***de. Having finished an internship with the NFL in California, it was time for her to return home.
She made a decision that she was either going to go through with su***de, or she was going to get on the plane and return home. She then prayed to God and asked for help. She then said, that God told her, “If you trust me, I’ve got you.”
Jenifer decided to board the plane and come home, and not long after that, she found out she was pregnant again.
Being pregnant again, she was having PTSD and nightmares from the abortion with her first pregnancy, but God pulled her out of that fear and darkness, and brought her to Life Choices and she began her healing journey through our HOPE ministry in the post-abortion Bible study.
Jenifer recalled that it took her 10 or 11 weeks into the 14-week study before she finally cried, and this is when God began to turn her heart of stone into one of flesh. During this Bible study, God gave her the name her baby she aborted. Through prayer, she found out that her baby was a girl and that her name was Chandler.
While Jenifer was pregnant with her 2nd child, she felt like God was calling her to make an adoption plan for this baby.
Sometime after this, she asked Karen McNeil ( #6 of this coffee project) to be her mentor. Karen then became a pivotal figure in Jenifer’s life and helped her get into counseling. Through counseling and receiving a lot of love from Life Choices and friends, she described the decision-making process of making an adoption plan as the Lord spoon feeding her what He wanted her to do. Making this decision took 6 months.
In the following months, Jenifer tried to talk God out of this plan, but as time went on it was very clear to her that this is what He wanted her to do. Instead of a traditional baby shower, she had a keepsake shower where friends and family placed milestone gifts into a hope chest for her daughter. Some of the gifts included: a sweet 16 necklace, a treasure chest for her first tooth, things for her wedding, etc. Jenifer placed the Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and the Bible as her gifts.
Jenifer also recounted to me how wonderful the adoptive family was to her not only in her pregnancy, but during the birth, and even to this day. They have a wonderful relationship that began when Jenifer made her adoption plan. The family made the decision not to be present at the hospital when Jenifer gave birth because they wanted to leave her the option to change her mind.
Karen came to support her during this time, and instead of having to hand her baby to the adoptive family, she placed her in the arms of her loving mentor and friend, Karen.
Karen was there on one of the hardest days of Jenifer’s life, making sure she wouldn’t feel alone. Jenifer also had a friend who spent the whole day and night with her on the last day of the revocation period and prayed with her until midnight.
God made sure that in every hard season, Jenifer was not alone. On her third visit with the adoptive family after her daughter was born, the adoptive parents told her they wanted their daughter to know her from the very beginning, creating a beautiful relationship not only with her daughter, but also with the adoptive parents.
Several years later, she found out she was pregnant for a third time and gave birth to her son, whom she decided to parent, and who would later grow up to do amazing things (keep reading to find out!)
Jenifer has been every Life Choices client: the post-abortive woman, the birthmother, and the single mom, and the Lord is using her to bring more and more people to Himself. In our meeting, one of the things she closed with was, “saving babies means you have to the save the mother,” and I couldn’t agree more!
Before I go, remember her son? Well, he grew up to be a missionary with Compassionate Hope, rescuing children from trafficking.
Praise the Lord, for He has done wonderful things, especially in the life of my new friend, Jenifer Yates.
