IMPACT: Why Pregnancy Centers Play a Vital Role in Reducing Abortions

Why Pregnancy Centers Play a Vital Role in Reducing Abortions IMPACT

Pregnancy centers continue to save tens of thousands of lives each year – and the pro-abortion world sees the threat and is attacking viciously. One example: In March 2018, the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics published an article entitled: “Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Legal but Unethical.”

In that article, the authors offer broad, sweeping generalities but do not offer any evidence from unbiased sources. They also fail to say anything about the very real ethical issues surrounding abortion clinics. Nevertheless, some journalists spread around the one-sided attack, partly because it conforms to pro-abortion prejudice, and partly because few know that the AMA once stood by the Hippocratic Oath, which includes a prohibition on doctors promoting abortion.

Sadly, pro-abortion thinking now dominates the AMA, which realizes the massive threat that each pregnancy center presents to the pro-abortion agenda. Every day at pregnancy centers, dedicated professionals and volunteers influence men and women – almost all of them facing unplanned pregnancies or considering abortion – to choose life.

Every time they succeed they’ve convinced one or two more people to change their view on the value of unborn children’s lives, and thereby on the abortion debate. It’s America’s best sustained grass-roots campaign since at least the 19th century – when an earlier pro-life campaign also made a difference.

Changing an Abortion-Minded Culture to a Pro-Life Culture

The U.S. had an abortion epidemic from 1830 up to the Civil War. Sometimes literally blowing dust off stacks of old documents in the Library of Congress, I learned that abortion during that era was more frequent, in proportion to the U.S. population that totaled 30 million in 1860, than it is now. All that changed during the 50 years from 1860 to 1910, when the number of abortions in America, again in proportion to the population, declined by at least 50%. Why?

It was largely because of groups like our modern day pregnancy centers. Organizations like the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), the YMCA and YWCA (Young Men's or Women's Christian Association), and the Salvation Army helped women who were at risk for abortions. They offered programs of education, refuge, and adoption. These programs were highly successful because they provided concern and care for the women, helped them avoid unwanted pregnancy, and walked with those already pregnant through difficulties so they wouldn’t kill their children.

Many doctors were involved, as well. Unlike today, the American Medical Association was a staunch opponent of abortion. It even dubbed the practice “unwarrantable destruction of human life.” It never would have published an article like the AMA did last year.

Why Are Pregnancy Centers So Successful?

In the late 19th century, pro-life Americans fought what they called “the evil of the age” in two ways: Their movement had a political, educational, and social side, and a grassroots side. The political arm tried and tries to prevent abortions through persuasive argument, focusing on the horrors of abortion, and seeking laws to regulate and eventually outlaw the murderous act.

Pregnancy centers, on the other hand, spoke and speak a message of hope and life into the men and women at the point of their life-and-death decisions. They show each parent the value of the life they have created. Theirs is a person-to-person approach.

As abortion began to decline after the Civil War, many states passed laws against abortion. Most local officials ignored them and prosecuted few abortionists. Eliminating abortion by law, while useful and important, is not as powerful a tool as many people believe. Inclining the hearts and minds of the people against it is a much more effective option.

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Syndicated columnist Laura Hollis acknowledged the difference between the pregnancy centers and the political arm of the movement in the July 2, 2018 Boston Herald. Hollis wrote her op-ed piece in response to the recent Supreme Court decision in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra. This decision overturned California’s Reproductive FACT Act of 2015, which advocates claimed “was necessary to ‘protect’ women from ‘unlicensed’ centers.” Her article showed how slanted media coverage labels pregnancy centers as “‘abortion rights opponents,’ rather than pro-life advocates.”

While pregnancy centers are clearly against abortion, their primary focus is not on opposing it politically, as some journalists want us to believe. Their primary focus is on each and every individual who comes through their doors for help. They are not trying to hinder those individuals’ right to choose: They are helping them make an informed choice. And the results are impressive.

Hollis explains: “For liberals, the real problem with pro-life clinics is not their licensure but their efficacy…. The vast majority of women who visit pro-life pregnancy centers decide not to have an abortion. The existence – and success – of these clinics threatens Big Abortion’s bottom line. For all the blather about being ‘pro-choice,’ abortion advocates seem perennially perturbed by the number of women who choose life for their babies, rather than abortion.” (Emphasis added.)

How You Can Help Parents Chose Life

Every day pro-life centers encourage parents to choose life. They are winning the pro-choice battle. Every life saved is an incalculable victory, but they are also having a cumulative effect on the culture simply by virtue of the number of people they have cared for – truly cared for – over the many years of the battle.

Add to the cumulative effect a generational effect. Each mother who decides to have her baby will pass on her story to her child(ren). The multiplying effect is personal, powerful, and ongoing. By changing the minds and hearts of the people they serve, pregnancy centers are at the center of a cultural revolution that will have long-lasting effects.

Just as abortion spreads through institutions like Planned Parenthood, more people are choosing life through the work of pregnancy centers around the country. That’s why it’s time for all Americans who see that life starts at conception to support, volunteer in, and promote their local pregnancy centers. The more people that do so, the faster we’ll see our culture stop the killing of babies – regardless of what the politicians and courts do.

Marvin Olasky is editor in chief of WORLD magazine, website, and podcast, and a former chairman of the Austin Crisis Pregnancy Center. He is the author of more than 20 books, including Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America, and The Press and Abortion, 1838-1988. Follow Marvin on Twitter @MarvinOlasky.