It begins with her voice. Never mind the Phi Beta Kappa key from Wellesley College, the Harvard MBA, the classically trained, logical mind that fueled high-level corporate planning and a controversial rise to the executive suites of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bendix Corporation, Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons—all by the time she was 32 years old. Never mind the humanitarian awards, the board of directors positions, the citation as one of the "most influential women in America." Never mind her New York Times bestseller Powerplay.

No. Mary Cunningham Agee’s voice is the key to her persuasive power, for in it is the perfect merger of style and content: a modulated, seamless method of speech and a compassionate message of Christian love.

That message was shaped long before Mary came to the ivory towers of the Ivy League and the glass towers of corporate boardrooms. It began in a messy rock garden, when Mary was seven years old, the morning of her First Communion. Decked in a white cotton dress, she sat on a small rock while Father William Nolan -- her Uncle Bill—sat on a larger one.

It was a special day, but even happy days had a hole in them for Mary, whose father had abandoned their family a year and a half earlier. Uncle Bill had stood in the gap, but even he could not take her dad’s place. Now he was talking to her quietly about the Lord’s Prayer.

"As he did," Mary says today, "I suddenly realized that as I prayed, ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ God was a father to me. I had lost something very precious to me, but that loss made room for grace in my life. I learned that only in suffering and loss can we be prepared to be filled with grace."

That childhood epiphany stayed with Mary, carried her through professional storms in the early 1980s, and comforted her when she experienced the most painful loss of her life. After marrying William Agee, former CEO of Bendix, now CEO of Morrison Knudsen Corporation, they joyfully anticipated the birth of their first child.

But after seeing her tiny daughter dance on the sonogram screen, Mary suffered a second-trimester miscarriage in January 1984. For months afterward, she stared at the empty nursery, aching within.

As she prayed, she began to think about other women who had lost children, but who were not surrounded by loving support, as Mary was, who had seen no way out of their predicament other than an abortion.

Feeling called to act on such women’s behalf, Mary called ten abortion clinics around the country. In each call, she asked the clinic to give her phone number to ten women who might be willing to discuss their experience with abortion.

Over the following weeks, 91 of those 100 women told Mary that if they had had any sort of reasonable alternative, they would have chosen to give birth. Abortion, for them, had not been a matter of making a choice, but of feeling they had no other choice to make.

Mary’s response was to found in 1986 the Nurturing Network, a nationwide resource providing women in crisis pregnancies practical support. Today, after serving more than 4,500 clients, Mary knows of only one who, faced with the helps the Network offers, chose abortion.

Pregnant women who contact the Nurturing Network through its 800 number (1800TNN4MOM) are asked to do just one thing: fill out an extensive application about themselves, their dreams and goals, and the obstacles their pregnancy presents.

Some need a leave of absence from their current job and a similar short-term position in another company. Others need free medical care, or a transfer to a different university. Some need a safe place to live, or adoption counseling, or parenting training.

The Network, which now includes over 19,000 contacts, prides itself on creatively meeting those needs. Each Client receives counseling. Seven hundred Nurturing Homes are on call. An informal coalition of doctors provides services for free or reduced rates. A network of employers and colleges accept short-term pregnant employees and students.

Last summer, a CBS 48 Hours crew filmed the Nurturing Network in action and talked with one young Client. Tall, with curly brown hair spiraling over her shoulders, she held a relaxed, smiling baby in her arms. She confessed, "I wouldn’t have had an abortion; I would have just killed myself. Without the Network, I wouldn’t even be here. I would have been just another statistic."

Woven into the philosophy of the Nurturing Network is the truth Mary learned herself years ago: suffering and loss provide an avenue for grace.

In her calm, kind way, Mary counsels clients, "The pattern you choose in response to this pregnancy will be played out again and again in your life. Rather than flee the pain, embrace, it, and you will see grace poured out. In sacrificing short-term ease for a long-term benefit for someone else, you have an opportunity to lasting personal growth."

In her multiple roles as counselor, mother, home schooler, volunteer, and executive, Mary has an unlikely time each day to replenish the well of her energies. At precisely five minutes to three—every morning—she awakens. The house is quiet. She reads her Bible, prays, writes in her journal. During one of these middle-of-the-night interludes some years ago, a phrase recurred in Mary’s mind: "The violence that is committed against women by society today...

Reflecting on those words fuels her efforts to help women who have been led to believe that abortion is the only solution to their crisis pregnancies. "Abortion is really the ultimate form of violence, disguised in a slogan called freedom," says Mary. The Nurturing Network is just one little voice that is calling out to say it doesn’t have to be that way."