'A surge of hope': The fight to keep crisis pregnancy centers open

Washington D.C., Mar 28, 2020 / 05:00 am

Facing limited hours and a shortage of supplies, crisis pregnancy centers are working and praying with pregnant women, helping any way they can during the pandemic.

"I think we need to storm the heavens for all the women in crisis pregnancies, because they are in crisis, which means there's a crisis at home. And if they're sheltered-in-place, that means they're in a situation of crisis, and they can't get out," said Mathilde Mellon, founder and CEO of Mulier Care – Pregnancy Help Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has spread quickly in the U.S., with more than 62,000 confirmed cases on Wednesday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Businesses and non-profits across the U.S. are closing down or limiting their hours for public safety, and to comply with state and local health mandates.

This means that crisis pregnancy centers are having to operate short-staffed, at a distance, or even close their doors completely in a time when they are concerned abortion rates will go up.

Pregnancy centers are now developing new care plans, providing counseling over the phone or delivering needed supplies such as diapers and baby formula to the women who need them.

The Sisters of Life run their "Visitation Mission" in New York City for expectant mothers, and in the past weeks have been ensuring that women have the diapers, food, cribs, and strollers that they need, said Sister Virginia Joy who directs the Respect Life Office of the Archdiocese of New York.

A volunteer network has been sending food and gift cards for mothers and families, and women are being helped in their moves to maternity homes in different parts of the country.

Front Royal Pregnancy Center in rural Virginia, 75 miles west of Washington, D.C., is still operating but on an "essentials-only" policy. If women call ahead for material assistance, clinic helpers can bring baby formula or diapers to their door, and the clinic is still accepting phone calls for consultations on a case-by-case basis.

"Last week, we had a huge drop in the number of people who came to us for services," clinic worker Olivia McDonough told CNA on Monday. The clinic normally serves 25 clients in a week, she said, but had just five clients last week.

In California, the state's governor Gavin Newsom issued a shelter-in-place order on March 19. Marie Leatherby, executive director of the Sacramento Life Center, said it is "challenging" for the center to maintain its day-to-day operations with the mandate.

"Right now we're running just kind of with the skeleton staff, mostly doing phone consultations, nurse consultations," she said, as well as "drive-by baby care packages with diapers or baby baskets for newborns."

Other centers have had to close their doors, such as Nashville's Pregnancy Help Center.

"It's devastating, because Planned Parenthood is still open, and our mayor won't shut them down, and they've been deemed an essential service," Mathilde Mellon told CNA. "Apparently, their abortions are a critical medical procedure, and it's horrible."

Mellon also runs a mobile medical unit, but had to halt its operations as well out of concern for the safety of her staff.

Abortion providers elsewhere have either been allowed to remain open or have done so in defiance of state orders.

Planned Parenthood affiliates in New York told Buzzfeed News last week that their doors were open.

In Ohio, Planned Parenthood affiliates continued to perform surgical abortions despite the state's health department curtailing all non-essential or elective surgeries by the evening of March 18. The state's attorney general wrote Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio's Cincinnati surgery center on March 20, ordering them to "immediately stop performing non-essential or elective surgical elective abortions."

The president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said that Planned Parenthood is "continuing to put abortion and profits before health and safety."

On Tuesday, Dannenfelser and a coalition of pro-life leaders wrote to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, asking him to urge abortion providers to cease operations and donate their personal protective equipment to hospitals for staff to treat the new coronavirus.

Other states, such as Washington and Massachusetts, have allowed abortions to continue despite canceling other elective surgeries. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, meanwhile, has applied the governor's order to curtail most abortions in the state.

In New York, pro-life advocates frantically called the Respect Life Office saying that abortion clinics in the Bronx were packed with staff and clients, Sister Virginia Joy told CNA- a clear safety hazard in the very epicenter of the U.S. pandemic.

Tennessee Right to Life has been petitioning the state's governor Bill Lee to shut down abortion facilities but "have not heard back" from the office, Mellon said. Nashville's mayor John Cooper has been sympathetic to the abortion industry, she said, and "Planned Parenthood has got a stronghold here in Davidson County."

And the fact that abortion providers remain open in a climate of fear and economic uncertainty is almost certainly bad news, pro-life advocates warn.

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"We're definitely worried about that," McDonough told CNA. "I think that the economics is always the deciding factor with women considering abortion."

"There's just a lot of anxiety and fear, right now," Leatherby said, noting that the phone calls and consultations at the Sacramento Life Center "just seem to be the abortion-minded in the past two weeks."

On Monday the center had several callers hang up in the middle of the conversation. "We couldn't seem to get women to want to talk to us. They just want that abortion, and that's it, and there's nothing we can do for them," Leatherby said. "

In another case, a woman was told by her family that she was being selfish in bringing a child into the world at this time, Sister Virginia Joy said. In this case, pro-lifers need to be "getting them to be able to answer what they most want," she said. "I think when you get to the bottom of a woman's heart, what she most desires is to give life to her child."

Tennessee's abortion regulations-an "informed consent" provision and a mandatory 48-hour waiting period before having abortions-are still in effect, Mellon said, perhaps helping to reduce the number of abortions for women who are traveling to facilities in the state.

With the new coronavirus has come mass restrictions on businesses, and layoffs of workers have begun. U.S. consumers also began "panic buying" non-perishable items including baby diapers, which affected the supplies of local pregnancy care centers.

Leatherby noted that "the stores are all out of diapers and wipes," and that several women had called the center looking for supplies as their baby showers had been canceled.

In Front Royal, women who had lost their jobs did request formula or diapers last week, McDonough said, adding that "we're expecting to see a lot more clients like that over the next few weeks."

Centers are also concerned about donations coming in. "Our fundraisers are all going by the wayside," Leatherby said, noting that "anybody that could spare a gift would be really great, because I think that's going to be a big worry coming up."

"God is good. He's taken care of the Life Center for 48 years now," she said.

Prayers, however, are most needed, pro-life leaders say.

"It's a supernatural grace that these women have to receive to choose life. It really has to be a work of the Holy Spirit," Sister Virginia Joy said.

Last week, five women reportedly turned around before entering area abortion clinics even though no sidewalk counselors were present, she said.

They had seen people praying outside the clinic, and "that, kind of gave them a surge of hope," she said. "They saw it as a sign to reach out for a different sort of help, not abortion, but to actually be able to choose life."

The present crisis also presents a critical "opportunity" for society to rediscover the human dignity of the most vulnerable, she said.

"This could potentially be a huge moment of conversion, this desire to preserve life in the face of this virus," she said. "May it be an opportunity to preserve and uphold the dignity of every human life at all stages."