While the public is constantly being told about pro-abortion campaigns to “help” women find a way to abort their unborn children in light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it is nigh on impossible to read about how the thousands of pro-life organizations have lovingly responded. So it’s doubly surprising to read “Anti-abortion groups are getting more calls for help with unplanned pregnancies” both because it did not fit the tiresome pro-abortion narrative and because it was a largely sympathetic story [] from of all places, National Public Radio (NPR).
Sarah McCammon focuses on ProLove Ministries and its Executive Director Pam Whitehead.
On a summer day in a quiet neighborhood outside Houston, Pam Whitehead is sitting at the kitchen table of a split-level home, taking calls from women who are pregnant and need help.
“We were preparing for this in advance,” Whitehead says. “We knew this was coming, we anticipated it, and we knew that we needed to prepare to be able to serve women.”
“Serve women”! And do they ever, handling the rush of so many more requests for help.
She says calls to her group’s hotline have been increasing – first, starting about a year ago, after the law known as S.B. 8 banned most abortions in Texas after about six weeks. They’ve continued – and come from across the country – since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
Whitehead’s hotline that connects women with a variety of support services. “On this day, she takes down information from a woman who already has young children and is looking for help with transportation,” McCammon writes, “Others need help with diapers, formula, or housing.”
“Whitehead is taking hotline calls from the kitchen of a maternity home outside Houston, where several women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, were washing dishes, cooking, and hanging out in the adjacent living room. Near the front door, several strollers stand in a neat row — what Whitehead jokingly calls the ‘parking garage’ — while their tiny occupants sleep down the hall. Women typically come here – sometimes for months at a time — after struggling to find stable housing for themselves and their children.”
It is no surprise that one of the women McCammon interviews does not want her last name used. Samantha fears “blowback” from a boyfriend who pressured her to abort. She’d come to Houston originally intended to place her baby for adoption but gradually changed her mind, especially as her baby moved.
SUPPORT LIFENEWS! If you like this pro-life article, please help LifeNews.com with a donation!
She delivered early. “Pam was in the room with me and she was holding my hand,” Samantha says. “And it was the scariest, because he was little – so little, he was way too early. But he’s doing amazing now.”
McCammon writes about how Whitehead’s group is one of many around the country – “including hundreds of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers that they work with that offer parenting classes and supplies, often donated by church groups.”
But it wouldn’t be NPR if she didn’t finish with a quote a pro-abortion critic who rattled off the company line: misleading information, “taking advantage” of their economic insecurity, etc., etc., etc.
However, the true picture is found in these two paragraphs:
For Samantha, who describes herself as pro-choice, the maternity home has been a rare, if complicated, place of refuge and support.
In her small bedroom near the front of the house, filled with baby clothes and toys, Samantha says she’s grateful for the help and especially the housing — which she’d struggled to find because of a criminal conviction in her past.
God bless the work of these women-helping centers.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
