Philadelphia couple explains how arrested pro-life activist Mark Houck saved their baby: ‘Thank God’

A young Philadelphia couple recently explained to a pro-life organization how Mark Houck, a pro-life Catholic activist who was recently arrested by federal agents, convinced them not to abort their baby.

“I had one hand on the door about to go into Planned Parenthood, and then Mark stopped us, and he was like, ‘You guys don’t have to do this,'” the unidentified young mother told Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia in a video published Sept. 26.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania arrested Houck, 48, on Sept. 23 in front of his wife and seven children at his rural Kintnersville home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The pro-life father, who often protests peacefully outside abortion clinics, is co-founder and president of The King’s Men, a Catholic ministry that aims to spiritually mentor young Catholic men.

The arrest reportedly resulted from an altercation Houck had with a Planned Parenthood escort in Philadelphia in October 2021, when he was accused of pushing a 72-year-old man outside the clinic after the escort allegedly verbally harassed Houck’s 12-year-old son. Federal authorities arrested him under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which prohibits demonstrators from blocking access to abortion clinics.

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Explaining how she was ridden with “shame and guilt” upon finding out she was pregnant, the mother Houck spoke to said she scheduled an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic, but was unsure about it. If Houck had not stopped her, she said, “I really felt like I would have went through with it and I would have been living with regret.”

“We talked to him, and he really got through to us, like, literally before we walked into the doors,” the father said. “He made sure he told us and made us feel like, you got it… and he was right. He opened my eyes to a lot of stuff.”

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The mother said Houck “was really just trying to get to know us on a deeper level than us just trying to get an abortion, and that’s another reason why it was real easy and quick to open up to him, because it wasn’t a judgmental thing at all.”