While protests across the country and world occurred at Planned Parenthood facilities this past weekend, one family has taken to the blogosphere this month to share their touching story.

Meet Heather Ellis. A mom to a 6 year-old boy who has struggled with infertility, an incompetent cervix and several miscarriages. After years of trying to become pregnant, she and her husband were overjoyed at the fact that they were expecting twins. In November of 2014, when her twin boys were just 22 weeks old, Ellis’ pregnancy took a turn for the worse. She was forced to deliver her babies.

When the doctors first saw that my cervix was shortening and the chance for delivering healthy babies was low, they offered my husband and I an abortion. They told us we could just end the pregnancy right there, quick and simple. It broke my heart to even hear it, because I knew we would never do that. We had to fight for our babies! I had seen them in about 10 ultrasounds at that point, and I knew they were alive. I felt them kicking inside of me and they already each had their own little personalities. I just knew we had to do everything we could to try to save them, and we did!

The picture above was posted with the following message on Ellis’ Facebook page on August 6th:

With all this talk of abortion right now, I want people to know that this is what a 22 week old child looks like. This was just minutes after my twins passed away after living and breathing for about 30 minutes last November (Chase, the one on the right, looks different because he was in the sac without amniotic fluid for a couple days). It is legal to abort children at this age in way too many places. While I was holding my babies, wishing they would survive, babies at the same gestation that could have survived are being torn apart and discarded or sold. It makes my heart sad. There are so many better options (adoption being my personal favorite). These are precious children of God. I love you Chase and Cooper, and I hope someone will see this and reconsider their choice.

Ellis goes on to say that while she is not passing judgement, she wants to illustrate that these small “clumps of cells” being aborted are not just “clumps of cells”:

They have faces, they have small appendages and sadly, small organs that are sought after and sold for profit. Despite their poor chances of viability, Ellis chose not to abort her little men and give them, however small of a chance it was, a chance at life. She knew their names, she saw them on ultrasounds and even attributed different personalities to each child. They were cherished and loved. And although they have passed, Ellis still considers herself a proud mother of three boys.

You can read more stories and testimonies on her page.

Heather Ellis and her family were given a choice; a very hard one at that. They had to mourn the loss of two young souls. They also would have been mourning the loss of their two sons had they decided to abort. The outcome for them could have been construed, arguably in the pro-abortion field, “the same.” Death was imminent. But they wanted to hold these sweet babies in their arms for one first-and last time. They did not care that it was only for 30 minutes before they said their final goodbyes. Chase and Cooper part of their family and continue to be this very day.

In the dismal state of morality that our world is in, I think it’s important to pass around these stories and to be encouraged by them. Our prayers are with the Ellis family and those families who have suffered a similar fate of losing a child too soon.

The Ellis’ could have chosen death…but in the end, they chose LIFE.