News
Featured Image
Cree Erwin died after an abortion in Michigan.Operation Rescue

DETROIT, Michigan, April 28, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Tyler Sheppard’s laissez-faire attitude toward abortion changed forever when his beloved sister died after an abortion.

Cree Erwin-Sheppard, 24, went alone for an abortion last June 30. She also had an intrauterine device (IUD) implanted.

“Cree went to Planned Parenthood by herself and ended up getting an abortion,” Tyler told LifeSiteNews. “Immediately after the abortion, she started having complications.  She was in agonizing pain, and it wasn’t getting any better over a couple of days.”

The abdominal pain and bleeding from the abortion and/or the IUD wouldn’t stop.  

“She finally decided to tell her mom what she had done. She was rushed to the emergency room and given pain killers and nausea medicine and released,” Tyler said, dumbfounded. “It was early in the morning, fourth of July weekend.”

Cree slept on her mother’s bed all night and all the next day. Cree’s mother checked in on her periodically and noticed Cree having difficulty breathing.

When she checked Cree in the wee morning hours of Independence Day, Cree was “ice cold” and unresponsive. She frantically called 911.

ARVE Error: The [[arve]] shortcode needs one of this attributes av1mp4, mp4, m4v, webm, ogv, url

“The last time she checked her, she had already passed,” Tyler said.

Cree died because the abortionist perforated Cree’s uterus, an all-too-common “complication” from both abortion and IUD implantation.

Tyler explained that their family was close-knit, and if Cree would have told anyone about the baby, they would have stepped in to help.

“If she felt overwhelmed and needed somebody to take the baby, more than a few of us would have volunteered,” Tyler told Church Militant. “She made the wrong decision, and we lost a loved one because of it.”

For Tyler, it was the most painful turning point of his life. “It was devastating,” he said.  

Tyler now stands against both abortion and its flagship corporation, Planned Parenthood.

“Growing up, I’d hear a lot of voices about women’s rights and ‘it’s their choice,’ and being a man, I didn’t want to tell women what to do,” he explained to LifeSiteNews.  “The topic of abortion in general, I stayed away from. But after she died, I looked more into it.”

He found that the abortion industry isn’t really about “choice” or “empowering” women.

“It’s not what it seems. They put it out there like their trying to help women, but they’re doing more harm than good,” the bereaved brother told LifeSiteNews. “Planned Parenthood is not trying to help women with their pregnancy. They’re just doing abortions — that’s where they get their funding from. They don’t have women’s best interests in mind. They don’t encourage adoption.”

“If they’re so concerned about women, why haven’t they voiced concern about what happened to my sister?”

Tyler did some research and discovered that the foundation of Planned Parenthood is faulty. “The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, believed in population control,” he explained. “Their philosophy is that abortion is a good thing, because it keeps certain populations down.”

LifeSiteNews asked Tyler,“Having looked into it for yourself, what would you say to a woman considering aborting her baby?”

“I would say that there are always other options,” Tyler replied. “Always. If you feel you can’t raise the child on your own, think about adoption. There are people who want to help you. There are places to stay, food, shelter, and all you need. If you find you’re pregnant, fight for the life of your child. That’s a life inside you.”  

Besides encouraging a pregnant woman to carry her baby, Tyler would also warn women about the dangers of abortion.  

“What happened to my sister could happen to you,” he said. “It wouldn’t necessarily be death, but other complications can happen. Abortion is not a safe procedure at all.”

Tyler claims that abortion is not only physically dangerous but can leave a deep emotional scar on a woman.  

“A lot of women I’ve heard from have had abortions have never really recovered from it, either physically or mentally,” he said. “It may be six months or a year later or more, but women don’t come from abortions unscathed. It affects relationships as well.”

For Tyler, the bottom line is simply caring for another person. “Unfortunately, not enough men care,” Tyler said. “It’s hard, because I would hope that if they slept with somebody, they would have that person’s best interest at heart, and they loved her. (But) a lot of times, teenage boys just want to have sex.”

“My sister’s death was totally avoidable,” Tyler admitted. “When she slept with the man, all the way up to her abortion, he could have helped her. She didn’t have to die.”

Tyler says the tragic fact is that “many don’t care. But I’m trying to encourage people to be more responsible when it comes to sex. If you fear STD bad enough to make you hesitate having sex, then realize the woman you have sex with could be seriously harmed or even die from an abortion.”

“People are looking for the right now, and deal with the consequences later. We’ve got to do better,” he told LifeSiteNews. “I just want people to be more responsible. I just want people to think more about their decisions.”

Tyler and other pro-lifers are spreading awareness of Cree’s unnecessary abortion death, for the sake of all women who fall for Planned Parenthood’s lies.

Tyler and others who care are standing in solidarity against the abortion industry that killed Cree. In the Detroit area, pro-lifers gathered Friday morning to protest Cree’s unnecessary death.

The gathering was part of the National Day of Prayer and Protest against Planned Parenthood, taking place across the United States this weekend.  Its goal is to shut down the abortion behemoth and stop feeding it with more than half a billion tax dollars a year.

Tyler claims there was even an attempt to cover up the cause of his sister’s death.  Numerous requests for Cree’s autopsy report were ignored by administrators, who mocked pro-lifers as “curiosity seekers.” Even a Freedom of Information Act filing was not answered until a censored copy was finally issued.

The cause of death — all mention of Cree’s abortion — was blacked out in the issued censored copy.  

But when Tyler alerted the media of the attempts to cover up the real cause of his sister’s death, he was finally given an uncensored copy of the coroner’s report. The previously censored part delineated the cause of Cree’s death as “uterine perforation status post early vacuum aspiration and intrauterine contraceptive device placement.”

View the uncensored report here.

Tyler says Planned Parenthood is at least partially to blame for killing his sister. He noted that the nation’s largest abortion conglomerate refuses to admit their procedures are “murdering not only children, but women as well.”

He would like to see a world in which abortion is not an option.  “I want to take [abortion] off the table,” he told Church Militant. “If abortion isn’t an option, more men and women will be responsible with how they approach sex.”

And so, Tyler’s life has been changed, from laissez-faire to pro-life activist, in honor and memory of his beloved sister Cree.  

“We were close. I’ve been in the military for the last six years, but I would keep in contact,” he told LifeSiteNews. “We would talk every week. I’d call and make sure everything was OK.”

Providentially, just before her fatal abortion, Tyler spent wonderful quality time with his sister. “A month or two before, I was able to spend some time, and we had a really good time together.”

“I’m very grateful for that.”