Bevelyn Williams to young leaders: ‘The courage is going to come once the conviction is there’

During Live Action’s 2025 Young Leaders Summit last week, participants had the opportunity to hear from inspiring and courageous pro-life speakers, including pro-life activist Bevelyn Williams. Williams served part of a 41-month sentence in federal prison for attempting to reach abortion-minded women outside a Manhattan Planned Parenthood in 2020. In January, Williams, along with 22 other pro-life activists, was pardoned by President Trump.

In her message to attendees, Williams shared that the three pillars of clarity, conviction, and courage are her “recipe for endurance.” She said it was those three pillars that helped her during her time in prison.

Jailed for Saving Babies: Bevelyn Williams at the Young Leaders Summit

In explaining clarity, Williams said, “It’s cute to accept culturally being a Christian, but what do you do when you’re the only one that believes in your values?” Clarity is necessary to understand and stick to those values when no one else around you feels the same. It’s then, Williams said, that you need conviction to stand true to your beliefs, and courage to live out those convictions.

“Conviction needs to come from the heart,” she explained. “The courage is going to come once the conviction is there,” she said, adding that it’s the “fuel to the faith.”

She told the crowd that those three pillars would help propel them in the fight for life. “When we come up here and we talk to you, we can convince you all day and night that abortion is murder and all of these things like that, but you have to make it up in your mind that this is what you want to stand on,” she said.

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She affirmed her faith in Jesus and shared that she would have still kept her faith even if it meant serving her entire prison sentence.

“I signed up because I knew that I was standing against abortion, I knew that I was standing for something that was righteous and something that was big.”

Finally, Williams shared that she has experienced abortion first hand, having her first of three abortions at age 15, which subsequently sent her into severe depression. Her life went on a downward spiral until she recognized that she needed redemption from God.

“When I made the decision to surrender my life to Christ, that’s when the freedom happened for me.”