Amy Griner prayed and then walked into the small counseling room at Sav-A-Life Shelby’s pregnancy resource center. Before her sat an obviously nervous young woman, who, judging by the way she was dressed, had squeezed the visit into her workday.
As the two waited for the woman’s pregnancy test results, they began talking about what brought her to the center. The woman said she was married with children but was involved in an extramarital affair and thought she was pregnant. Separated from her husband and taking care of the children alone, she had been pressured to have an abortion and didn’t know what to do.
The woman knew abortion was not what God wanted for her. After all, she was a professed born-again believer and faithful church attendee. But feeling overwhelmed with life, she considered the option anyway.
As the center’s client services coordinator, Griner, a member of Valleydale Baptist Church, Birmingham, in Birmingham Baptist Association, is trained for situations like this one. She prayed again silently and began sharing Scriptures with the woman about forgiveness and God’s plan for her life.
Within an hour and without knowing her pregnancy test results, the woman confessed her sin, recommitted her life to Christ, pledged to end the affair and committed to purity in her relationships with men.
And what about those test results? They were negative. While relieved about the test, she said the visit helped put her back on the path to God. She told Griner, “I came in for the pregnancy test but got so much more, and it was just what I needed to turn my life around.”
Fortunately — and unfortunately — stories like this are not uncommon in pregnancy centers across Alabama and nationwide. Each week, countless girls and women enter these facilities looking for answers, help and hope. They come in desperate and broken, and after speaking with staff and volunteer counselors, many leave renewed and ready to face upcoming challenges.
“God still works in incredible ways in the hearts and lives of women who come in,” said Annette Johnson, executive director of Sav-A-Life Shelby, an affiliate of Care Net pregnancy centers. “Women particularly seek after love, and we are able to show them that the greatest Lover of their souls can be and is the Lord Jesus Christ. To see Him change their hearts is incredible.”
Making much of the work pregnancy centers do possible are churches and individuals who provide them with financial, volunteer and prayer support. And according to many center directors around the state, Alabama Baptist support has become vital to winning the souls of women and saving the lives of their unborn babies.
“I believe that here in the South, local Baptist churches have been the backbone of the pregnancy care movement,” said Bob Foust, director of new center development at Care Net South in Birmingham. “In Alabama, the movement would not be nearly as powerful without Alabama Baptists.”
Clients at the Women’s Hope Medical Clinic in Auburn have quadrupled in the past five years, according to Executive Director Larry Webb. He believes the clinic’s ability to reach these clients would not be possible without the support of local congregations, including his home church, Lakeview Baptist, Auburn, in Tuskegee Lee Baptist Association.
“We have had more Baptist churches support us than any other denomination,” Webb said. “We depend so much on our churches. (They) are the absolute lifeblood of our ministry.”
Hal Cooper, associate pastor of prayer and evangelism at Lakeview, teaches an evangelism class for prospective counselors at Women’s Hope. He believes volunteering at a pregnancy center is a way to live out his faith.
“There is the aspect of Christianity that says you put into action what you believe,” Cooper said. “If we believe in the sanctity of life, we need to prove it; and this is one way to do it. We just want to step up to the plate and do whatever we can to live out what we believe the Bible says about the value of unborn children.”
Partnerships like those with Alabama Baptists have helped Care Net’s 34 Alabama affiliates counsel more than 16,000 women yearly, and 94 percent of those who are pregnant choose life for their babies, according to Foust, a member of Concord Baptist Church, Calera, in Shelby Baptist Association.
“In the last three years, we have seen a reduction in abortions in the United States, and I believe that is largely, in part, due to pregnancy care centers,” he said.
Yet as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday (Jan. 20) approaches, pregnancy center directors say many more churches and volunteers are needed to truly combat abortion.
According to The Alan Guttmacher Institute, the “research arm” of Planned Parenthood, in the United States, 24 percent of all pregnancies — excluding miscarriages — end in abortion and 48 percent of those choosing abortion have had at least one previous abortion. At the current rate, the Guttmacher Institute predicts that more than one-third of women will have at least one abortion by age 45.
Recent data from the Alabama Center for Health Statistics reveal that nearly 12,000 women had abortions in Alabama in 2006. This does not include abortions performed on Alabamians in other states.
And Christians are no exception, with one in five women having abortions being born-again or evangelical Christians, according to Guttmacher.
“I would say the major misconception for Christians is that abortion is rare among Christians,” said Peggy Hartshorn, president of Heartbeat International, a pregnancy center network that supports nearly 1,170 centers in 47 states — five in Alabama — and 40 other countries.
“It is a deep, dark secret for many of them, and it dramatically affects their relationship to the Lord, their husband and their living children.”
With such staggering statistics, many center directors believe churches can become more involved with the pro-life movement in many ways, but preaching against abortion is not enough to stop women from having the procedure.
In Johnson’s experience, most women experiencing unplanned pregnancies already know the truth. “I don’t have to tell them abortion is wrong; they tell me that it’s wrong,” she said. “They are like a trapped animal that is scared and afraid and will do anything to get itself out of that corner.”
Johnson said someone must come alongside these women, show them they can carry a child to term and point them in the direction of the One who created the life.
Hartshorn said churches must also be nonjudgmental, welcoming and loving to people who have had an abortion or been involved with abortions, including men, parents and/or grandparents.
“The Christian church is key in preventing abortions and in promoting the sanctity of human life,” she said.
“Unless our churches are really open to these people … , acknowledge that this is happening and provide postabortion healing, we are not really going to be able to stop abortions.”
In addition to supporting local pregnancy centers, Hartshorn recommends that churches educate their members about sexual integrity.
“We (pregnancy centers) cannot solve this problem alone,” she said. “We need to partner with the churches.”
Johnson agreed. “If a woman has the heart for the gospel and for Christ, she ought to go to her local pregnancy resource center and see how God can use her, change her and increase her joy by seeing Him work through her into the lives of other people.”
To volunteer at a local pregnancy center, visit care-net.org. If you are pregnant and need help or have experienced an abortion, then call 1-800-395-HELP.
Share with others: