An abortionist from Serbia, who performed abortions for more than two decades, has become one of the most vocal defenders of unborn babies in the country—and his conversion came because of a haunting dream.

His name is Stojan Adasevic. Having worked as an abortion doctor for 26 years, he had aborted approximately 48,000 babies. There were times when he would perform 20 to 35 abortions in a day.

Serbia, a communist country, taught that abortion was nothing more than “the removal of a blob of tissue,” according to Spanish newspaper La Razon, as reported by National Catholic Register.

Because this was what they taught, this was also what Adasevic believed, even when ultrasounds showing images of a baby in the womb became available in the 1980s.

“They taught us and they taught us, told us that life began with the first cry,” Adasevic said, according to LiveActionNews. “When a baby cries for the first time. That up to that moment, a human being is like any other organ in a woman’s body, like an appendix. The removal of an appendix from a mother’s body is not murder.”

However, he started to have questions about what he was doing when he began to have a strange, recurring dream. In his dream, he would see a field with children playing and young people laughing. Some of them looked as young as four years old, while the oldest among them looked like they were about 24 years old.

They were all afraid of him. Every time he would try to approach them, they ran away, Adasevic said.

There was also a man in his dream, dressed in a black and white habit, who just stared at him and did not say anything.

Adasevic said he would have the same dream each night, and he would always wake up in a cold sweat.

His experience was detailed in the documentary ‘The First Hour,’ which was produced by Catholic Radio and Television Network (CRTN).

One night, while he was having the same dream, he asked the man in black and white habit who the children and the young people were. The man’s straightforward answer shocked him: “They are the ones you killed with your abortions.”

When he woke up, Adasevic felt convicted by the dream and decided not to perform abortion again. However, his resolve was immediately tested that day when a cousin of his came in with his girlfriend. She was four months pregnant, and his cousin wanted the baby aborted.

Not able to refuse his cousin, Adasevic reluctantly performed the procedure. As he was doing the abortion, he pulled out a distinctly formed hand. He mistakenly placed it on a table where iodine had spilled, and when the hand’s nerve endings touched the iodine, it began to move on its own. He stared at it, horrified.

Next, he pulled a leg out of the womb. He was going to place it away from the iodine spill, but something disrupted him. He accidentally dropped the leg, and it fell right next to the hand. And just like the arm, it started moving, too.

So the hand and the leg were on the table, side by side, both of them moving. The sight disturbed Adasevic.

Not wanting to see another baby part pulled out and move involuntarily, Adasevic crushed the parts in the womb before he took them out. But just when he thought he had crushed everything, he reached in with his forceps—and pulled out the baby’s heart.

“I look, and I see a human heart, contracting and expanding and beating, beating, beating. I thought I would go mad,” he said. “I can see that the heartbeat is slowing, ever more slowly, and more slowly still, until it finally stops completely.”

“Nobody could’ve seen what I had seen with my very own eyes, and be more convinced than I was—I had killed a human being,” he said.

After completing the procedure, Adasevic became more convinced that he would stop doing abortions once for all. He informed the hospital of his decision—the first time that a doctor in Serbia had done so.

He remained firm with his stance, which came with a great price: his salary was reduced to half, his daughter was fired and his son was prevented from enrolling at the state university.

Nevertheless, Adasevic became a key figure in advancing the protection of the unborn in his country. He has shared his story at various television and radio networks across Eastern Europe. He has been actively involved in the pro-life movement in his country until today.