Wrapping up a medical residency, most doctors are focused on establishing themselves in their chosen field, joining a practice and starting the long process of paying down the student loans that have piled up over the previous decade.

But as William Lile concluded his obstetrics and gynecology residency at the University of Florida in 1999, he had his sights set a notch higher.

Stirred by a string of four miscarriages early in his marriage, Lile—now a father of two—and a partner approached a prominent abortion provider in Pensacola, Fla., and bought him out of his practice.

Along with putting an immediate stop to abortion procedures and referrals at the clinic, Lile and his partner included a clause in the contract: the man who at one time had led the area in abortions had to agree to leave the region if he wanted to keep trafficking in abortion.

Presenting to a packed audience at his workshop, “God’s Miracle of Life in the Womb,” at the 2016 Heartbeat International Annual Conference this March, Lile showed a picture of a staircase leading to the second floor of the abortion mill he helped put out of business.

“I couldn’t help but think how many thousands and thousands of moms have walked up these stairs, had a baby inside, spent a half hour, maybe an hour upstairs, and went down the other set of stairs without a baby on the inside,” Lile said. “You go to some places and you can feel love and happiness—this wasn’t that place. You could feel this coldness, that there was some evil that was there.”

While he and his partner hadn’t planned on finding what they did at the top of the stairs, Lile has spent 16 years and counting making the most of an unanticipated discovery.

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Upon selling the building, the abortionist had left all of his tools, including a suction machine, exam table with stirrups, curettes and forceps.

“I looked at it and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, how many people have actually seen this? How many people really know what goes on with the baby in the womb and then what happens in the abortion surgical suite,” Lile said.

Lile and his partner immediately set out to put the tools once used for tearing apart preborn babies to good use for the first time, starting with a simple educational talk for their local church.

“It was a huge response,” Lile said. “People said, ‘I had no idea. This is going on in our town? We have Pensacola Christian College just down the street, we have all these big Baptist churches on every corner, and this is going on in our town?’”

That was the beginning of Lile’s foray into what has become somewhat of a second career, providing education on abortion procedures for the pro-life and Christian communities through speaking appearances, as well as articles and videos, hosted online at ProLifeDoc.org.

Using the tools the abortionist had left behind, four of Lile’s simple, non-graphic videos have gained close to a million views combined, topped by his “Abortion Machine Demonstration” video, where he uses an abortion suction machine to crush a steel paint thinner can in seconds.

Lile worked with the United States Council of Catholic Bishops to produce “God’s Miracle of Life,” a 60-minute DVD that includes bloodless demonstrations of common abortion procedures and argues for the sanctity of life on scientific, legal, and scriptural grounds.

“We wanted to do a couple of things,” Lile said. “We wanted to show life in the womb—we’re giving babies blood transfusions in the womb at about 18, 19 weeks gestation. We want to educate them, show them the life in the womb, and then show them how an abortion is performed in the first, second and third trimester.”

Lile, a board-certified ob-gyn who serves as the referral physician for three local pregnancy help centers, plus a sidewalk counseling ministry called Sidewalk Advocates for Life, is featured the May/June 2016 issue of theMessianic Times.

As the Messianic Times’ Nicole Schoen writes, Lile became a believer and formed strong pro-life convictions at a young age. It was his fascination with the joy of pregnancy and childbirth, in fact, that led him to pursue obstetrics, which he currently practices at Sacred Heart Hospital.

“You get to have the ultimate joy of delivering babies and new life into the world,” Lile told the Messianic Times.

Lile’s involvement at the national level includes his current roles on the medical advisory bodies of Students for Life, Priests for Life and Heartbeat International.

Lile also is involved with 40 Days for Life, and is the medical advisor for Florida state Rep. Mike Hill, co-sponsor of the 24-hour waiting period that is currently on hold pending review with the Florida Supreme Court.

“This is an opportunity I look at no matter where I speak,” Lile said. “To be able not only to save the lives of the babies within the womb but also to save the souls that are there from an eternity separated from God—that is the most amazing motivation you could ever have.”

LifeNews Note: Jay Hobbs writes for PregnancyHelpNews, where this originally appeared.