Print Issue: November 21, 2002

Ninety-Two-Year-Old Woman Donates $15,000 For Ultrasound

By Rebecca Rakoczy

HAPEVILLE - Lois Nichols isn't about to stand down about her beliefs.

"My hatred for abortion is something I have kept all my life," she said. "We have got to get abortion out of America . . . it's too good a country to kill its babies."

Terry Gibbs, right, Advice and Aid Pregnancy Problem Center director, and 92-year-old Lois Nichols stand by the center's new ultrasound machine. Nichols, a former Latin teacher for 50 years, donated $15,000 toward the purchase of the machine in honor of Mother's Day and in memory of the unborn children. Nichols, who vehemently opposes abortion, said, "Abortion is a murder that cannot be defended." (Photo by Michael Alexander)

So when the 92-year-old member of St. Francis de Sales Church, Mableton, heard that an ultrasound machine could make the difference in a woman's decision whether or not to have an abortion, she put her money where her mouth was. She donated $15,000 to the Advice and Aid Pregnancy Problem Center in Hapeville to help them purchase one.

"This place is wonderful," the former Latin teacher said of the center. "And this (machine) can show pregnant women that it is not a bunch of protoplasm, but it's a baby that they are going to kill."

The ultrasound machine is credited so far with helping at least five women reconsider their abortions in one day.

Born in Amarillo, Texas, in 1910, Nichols has lived to see the invention of many fantastic things during her lifetime - including the ultrasound.

Nichols taught Latin all over metro Atlanta as well as substitute taught at Christ the King School, Atlanta. She worked until she was 73 years old.

"I am not rich, but I am solvent," she said with a laugh. "I have had a very productive life and I am happy. I worked hard and enjoyed every bit of it." She is a widow and the mother of one daughter and several grandchildren.

Nichols says although she doesn't get around as well as she would like, she is still "tremendously interested in politics," and made it a point to always vote for the pro-life candidate.

"Maybe the Lord is making me live so I can fight abortion out of this country," the feisty woman said. "I was born in a America that didn't tolerate abortion."