Despite being targets of violence and political attacks, thousands of pro-life pregnancy centers across the country continue to serve mothers and babies in need.
This includes pregnant women who choose life for their unborn babies and, increasingly, traumatized mothers who learned too late the lie that abortion pills are like “taking an aspirin,” according to the National Catholic Register.
In the months since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, two pro-life leaders told the Register that their organizations have not seen a huge increase in pregnant mothers seeking help, but needs and attitudes definitely have changed.
Chelsey Youman, the Texas director and national legislative adviser for the Human Coalition, said their client numbers have been steady since the June ruling. Currently, 13 states are enforcing pro-life laws that protect unborn babies by banning or strictly limiting abortions, and more are fighting in court to do so.
A major concern, Youman said they have seen “an increase in women who are just saying, ‘It’s my right to have abortion; it’s my body’” in recent months and a “hardening of hearts towards the life growing in their womb.”
“The cultural battle is still at hand, and there’s so much work to be done on the cultural front, reminding people who maybe are hardened right now on the issue that we are still talking about human children in the womb,” she told the Register.
Melissa Nystrom, spokeswoman for Heartbeat International, which oversees almost 2,000 pregnancy centers, said some are seeing an increase in calls, while other centers’ numbers are about the same.
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Both Nystrom and Youman noted an increase in calls about the abortion pill, which the Biden administration recently began allowing to be sold through the mail without a doctor’s visit.
In some cases, pro-life counselors are providing much-needed post-abortion counseling to traumatized women who realized too late that they had been lied to. Youman said some abortion groups are telling women that the abortion pills are similar to “taking an aspirin.” She said some women call them “mid-abortion” in a lot of pain; others call afterward, traumatized after seeing their aborted baby’s body, according to the report.
Many are “traumatized and seeking help, wanting a reversal, needing to go to the ER,” she said.
Here’s more from the Register:
She said their centers have also been hearing from women who ordered abortion pills from international suppliers “without ever having a sonogram, not always exactly certain how far along she is.” They get calls from women “with four pills in front of them and say, ‘What do I take? I don’t really have instructions.’ And we, of course, say, ‘We don’t recommend you take those pills; come get real gynecological care and see how far along you are.’”
Youman’s and Nystrom’s organizations provide compassionate and accurate information and support to pregnant, parenting and post-abortive individuals, and they do provide it all for free.
However, their organizations increasingly are being maligned by public figures like U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and other Democrat lawmakers – one possible reason why their numbers have not increased dramatically post-Dobbs. Many pro-life organizations also have been targets of violence, including arson, vandalism and threats this year.
Nystrom pointed out that change takes time, and they still are serving a lot of people.
“We may still see long-term increases or decreases that aren’t apparent just a few months after Roe was overturned,” she told the news outlet. “As expected, our work is still necessary and sought out. This is good news.”
Because the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, 13 states now are enforcing pro-life laws that prohibit or strictly limit the killing of unborn babies in abortions, and others are fighting in court to do the same.
New research estimates up to 10,000 unborn babies already have been saved from abortion since these laws went into effect this summer, and hundreds of thousands more are expected to be saved from death in the coming years.
