A pregnancy help organization in Wisconsin increased its reach to abortion-minded and determined women during the past few years and seeks continued growth with a vision to see abortion end.
Alliance Family Services oversees women’s pregnancy clinics in three communities, manages a mobile unit, and operates a women’s home. Each component is an endeavor to reach abortion-minded and determined women and help them choose life.
Additionally, partnering with other organizations adds to the focus of helping abortion-minded women choose life.
The pregnancy clinics are located in Kenosha, Racine, and La Crosse, which opened this year. The maternity home, called Hope House, came about through a partnership with a church and has helped abortion-minded and determined women who planned to abort because of lack of housing.
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“It’s so encouraging for life decisions in the moms that we see,” said Alliance Executive Director Ginna Cross. “We keep an open bed for emergency situations, so we consider ourselves full at three (women).”
Managing a women’s home, three brick-and-mortar clinic locations, and a mobile unit (purchased from Save the Storks) requires good planning, great skill, and reliable staff. Ginna and her husband Steve share administrative duties, and they rely on regional directors on the western and eastern parts of the states to oversee operations at the three clinics.
History and mission
Alliance was founded in Kenosha in 1984. Cross joined the board of directors in 2018.
“At that time, the board was really looking at ‘Are we on mission?’ and assessing if we were reaching the client that we were wanting to reach, which was the client that was looking for an abortion,” she said.
Reviewing the statistics, they discovered that was not the women they were drawing into the center. They began to refocus on how to bring in more women seeking an abortion. In 2021, “a lot of things really came together,” Cross said.
Cross and her husband became the directors and launched with a marketing partner, she said.
“We increased significantly the medical services we provided, rebranded to a very medical brand, and that’s when a lot of things turned around for us,” said Cross. “It’s been an exciting journey since then because we do see primarily the abortion-minded client and serve her.”
Pregnancy help center growth
In 2022, the organization added a second location, opened the women’s home, and began providing prenatal care and other medical services.
“We do prenatal care up to 20 weeks,” Cross said. “We provide STI testing and treatment, and we do well-women exams and abortion pill reversal.”
She attributes Alliance’s growth to a number of factors, she said.
“Our donors were very excited when we began to share honestly, ‘We have not been reaching this client, but we are going to reach her, we are going to figure out how to do that,’” Cross said. “Being able to talk to them through the process of getting that going and then them being able to hear the stories … having those testimonials, people are really excited about that – that’s why people are giving to pro-life organizations because they care about lives being saved.”
Also, she and her husband are growth-oriented and “business minded,” Cross said.
“In a business setting, you’re either growing or you’re dying,” said Cross. “There’s no maintenance mode.”
“For us, we are pushing every year – how can we do more, how can we reach more, how can we perform better?” Cross said. “I do think it’s crucial that we recognize that, in order for excellence to be achieved, we have to have that constant growth mindset.”
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Additionally, the organization provides competitive staff salaries.
“Recruiting and retaining excellent staff is important to us,” Cross said.
Focusing on the abortion-minded
Alliance went from seeing about two or three abortion-minded women a year to now seeing two or three a day, Cross said.
One of the biggest and most important changes made was partnership with Human Coalition, she said. Alliance has partnered with the organization since 2021 for marketing and for scheduling.
“They are just fantastic,” Cross told Pregnancy Help News. “Their whole reason for starting was to get the abortion-minded client into the pregnancy center door.”
Some organizations do the marketing, but then the phone rings at their clinic, she said. They are not staffed all kinds of hours of the day and evening, and neither are equipped to take and navigate those phone calls. Human Coalition has a call center that answers those calls, and they send clients text reminders.
“They do everything up until the client walks through our door,” said Cross.
If a client doesn’t show, Alliance staff contacts Human Coalition and lets them know, and staff at the call center reach out to the woman and tries to get her to reschedule.
Word-of-mouth has also increased the number of abortion-minded and determined women coming through Alliance’s doors, she added.
Cross gave a presentation during the 2024 Heartbeat International Annual Conference in April about reaching abortion-minded and determined women. She spoke about the changes her organization went through, including rebranding, hiring staff, and working with Human Coalition. Being “laser-focused” about reaching, bringing in, and serving abortion-minded and determined clients saves lives, Cross told her audience, and that inspires donors to give, helping a pregnancy center to grow.
Center vision
Alliance is poised to continue growing as Cross and her husband lead. Opening clinics and maternity homes in more Wisconsin communities is plausible, Cross said.
“We’re always looking for and exploring new locations,” she said. “Our hope and vision are to continue to grow … because we want to build a bigger brand. We want to build a bigger brand to compete with Planned Parenthood.”
That ties in with another large goal: to see abortion end.
“We want to be part of the pregnancy center movement [that helps to bring the] ending of abortion,” Cross said.
They want to be encouraging of the movement and learn. And they want to share. They want to see the movement grow.
“That’s something we think about,” Cross said. “How can we, in a unified way, take down big abortion? That’s what we want to do – we want to take down big abortion. I appreciate all the things going on along the path toward that goal.”
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) Pregnancy Help News.
