As some states lean into their ability to set pro-abortion legislation local pregnancy help organizations continue their mission to enable men and women to choose life.
The work of pregnancy help in post-Roe America was outlined in a recent segment of EWTN’s Pro-Life Weekly series, which featured leaders of local pro-life nonprofits in two states with some of the country’s most open-ended abortion laws. Show host Abigail Galvan interviewed Emily Trevino, director of the Ohio-based Alliance Pregnancy Center, and Sonia Mejia, executive director of Mary’s Home in Maryland.
“We had 2,400 client contacts last year, and we’re looking to see that number grow for this year,” Trevino said, adding that the local pregnancy help center she oversees in Alliance, Ohio, is “on track” to increase its service this year.
She also shared details of program services, describing Alliance Pregnancy Center as offering “free pregnancy testing, limited OB ultrasounds” and “STI testing.” In addition to medical services, the organization has targeted part of its mission on education.
“We provide education on parenting, pregnancy, fatherhood [and] life skills,” Trevino said, explaining the Learning for Life program. She also described their “Baby Boot Camp for labor and delivery [and] our mom to mom and dad to dad support groups.”
When asked how donations directly impact the mission of Alliance Pregnancy Center, Trevino said that financial gifts offered to the center “will go towards buying medical supplies, paying for labs when we do STI testing” as well as “subscription fees that go along with” the videos that comprise the Learning for Life program.
“We have donors who have sponsored subscriptions so that we can offer [the] course to each one of our clients,” she added.
As a result, parents are able to earn store credit for the center’s boutique, which is stocked primarily with donated goods such as toiletries, clothes, baby food and diapers.
“After watching the video, our client educator will come into the room and have discussion questions with them on maybe how they can apply what they learned to their style of parenting, to their child,” Trevino said.
Further information about the Alliance Pregnancy Center’s services can be found on its website.
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Similarly, Mejia explained that financial donations to Mary’s Home in Maryland aid to “pay for and maintain the housing that we provide for our moms” as well as fund “special needs that our moms have,” including “educational costs” and “legal assistance.” Donations also enable the ministry to pay staff members who can “walk deeply with the women” they serve.
“Most importantly,” she said, “donations show our moms that somebody out there who doesn’t know them loves them, without asking for anything in return. And sometimes this is the first time that the women we work with have experienced that unconditional love.”
Mary’s Home is a pregnancy help organization that offers “a safe place to live and a holistic program of services for pregnant women who are facing homelessness,” Mejia said. “We have two family style houses right across from each other where a mother comes and she has her own room for her and her child, and then shares the community spaces with the other women in the home.”
Three women and their children can live in each house, making a total of six living arrangements overseen by Mary’s Home. Those who run the ministry “commit to walking deeply with the women in the program through all of the challenges [of pregnancy and parenting], helping connect her to whatever support she needs to overcome them.”
Ohio and Maryland are two examples of states that are taking advantage of their ability to legislate increased access to abortion following the Dobbs decision.
Last fall, Ohio voters approved an amendment that enshrined a so-called “right” to abortion in the state’s constitution. In October, a judge also struck down the Buckeye State’s heartbeat bill which sought to ban abortion after a heartbeat is detected, typically around six weeks gestation. Abortion is currently legal up until 22 weeks of pregnancy in Ohio and has risen 19% compared to the number of unborn babies killed in the state last year.
Maryland voters have also recently cemented the state’s abortion access via a constitutional amendment passed last month. Although killing the unborn was already legal in Old Line State, the ballot measure was placed before voters to solidify the law and make it more difficult for legislators to overturn the “right” abortion has in the state’s constitution.
But the ongoing efforts to further the pro-abortion agenda are not swaying local pregnancy help organizations like Alliance and Mary’s Home, both of which embrace their life-giving missions with greater fervor during the Christmas season.
Tweet This: Ongoing efforts to further the abortion agenda are not swaying local pregnancy help organizations from embracing their life-giving missions.
“We have a very special Christmas celebration that we’ve held annually since 2014,” Trevino said.
She shared that 21 families participated in the event’s “family picture day,” made possible thanks to a professional photographer whose donated talents provide free photo packets for each family.
Those served by Alliance Pregnancy Center also have the opportunity to spend their saved store credit to buy presents from the center’s boutique shop.
Mejia also described Mary’s Home as striving to “make this as much of a family environment as possible,” especially during holidays.
“We always have a decorating party with Christmas movies and Christmas cookies,” she said. “We have a couple of volunteers who are going to come in and do Christmas caroling with our moms. And we also have a really great gift of churches nearby that love to contribute Christmas gifts for the moms.”
