Pregnant women walk into pregnancy medical centers (PMCs) every day seeking help. They’re unsure, they’re frightened; sometimes they’re even angry. Inside, they find evidence of compassion prepared for them by an unseen collection of people: donors, administrators, and people who pray.
And while the pregnant women who walk into PMCs may not see those people, they will see these women.
These people are the first responders of the pregnancy help world. They are the frontline, most often women themselves, who choose to walk into PMCs, not as pregnant women in need of services, but as women who will help the pregnant women who need their services.
These are the faces the pregnant woman sees, the voices she hears, and the hearts she confides in while deciding whether she will end the life of her unborn baby.
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Unexpectedly pregnant, she walks into the PMC and finds a qualified and compassionate team of women ready to hear her story and care for her. And though she isn’t sure how she feels about the baby she carries inside her, this team chooses to care for her and her baby. This team compassionately embraces the individual humanity of each of them.
They look at ultrasound images of preborn babies with full knowledge that there may be no future images of these lives. The medical staff and advocates see what boyfriends, family members, and friends aren’t asked to see. They see what women – the mothers of these unborn babies – sometimes can’t even bring themselves to view.
It is a heavy calling – an often-burdensome ministry - for these servants never think of the unborn just in theory. They are in too deep, so close that they have seen the living bodies of these unborn lives.
And what they see with their eyes lives heavily in their minds and hearts. And they carry it.
They carry it even as they prepare for the next woman – and baby – who needs their help.
They carry it as they ready themselves to celebrate with the next woman who will respond to the reality of her living baby and choose life. They listen carefully, answer her questions, serve her well, and connect her with resources.
They carry it as they steady themselves to see the next woman who will see life and then still choose abortion. There’s added weight in the truth that, as she walks out their doors, her next stop could be the abortion clinic. This reality of imminent abortion is ever present, for some women already have abortion pills in their purses when they enter these PMCs.
They carry it when the pregnant woman returns – no longer pregnant after her abortion.
What have I done? the woman asks.
Post-abortion, she comes back into the PMC and these same staff and volunteers walk through her grief with her. Even with the ultrasound image of her baby still in their minds, they lead this woman to the truth that God forgives and heals.
Tweet This: Post-abortion, she comes back into the pregnancy center and these same staff and volunteers walk through her grief with her.
They carry this weight for one reason.
Every connection with a pregnant woman is an interaction with two lives – and both are worth protecting.
Tweet This: Every connection with a pregnant woman is an interaction with two lives – and both are worth protecting.
"The business of pregnancy help is people,” said Beth Diemert, director of Affiliate Services with Heartbeat International. “Clients and patients of course, but also those who serve them.”
“Those who serve in pregnancy help are called, equipped, and empowered by our great God every day,” Diemert continued. “And . . .they are also human.”
Working in pregnancy medical centers means living in extremes. Mourning the life lost; celebrating the life saved. Even experiencing both extremes on the same day.
And – praise God – there are lives saved.
Pregnant women hear the truth. They see the truth. For over 50 years, these staff and volunteers have been the open door that provides pregnant women with the truth to make a decision based not on public rhetoric, a slogan, or the misguided fear that one life (the woman’s) can’t succeed without the death of another (her baby’s).
In the presence of these pregnancy center servants, pregnant women find a place of refuge and hope. Because they are not alone. The women of this inner circle are in there with them.
Thankfully, these staff and volunteers are not alone, either. They have God and they have you, the people who support PMCs around the country.
On behalf of all who serve in pregnancy medical centers, thank you for praying for them. For remembering them. For mentioning them when you speak with God.
They’ve chosen their path and followed their calling. They know it is a privilege that God has allowed them to share these life-saving moments with the pregnant women who walk through their doors. They would be nowhere else.
“The power of prayer for them . . . and their ministries is vital,” Diemert told Pregnancy Help News.
Will you continue to pray?
Pray for their hearts and minds as they see these formed bodies inside their mothers. Pray for their strength and peace as they stand in a culture that insists these unborn lives are not valuable. Pray for the hurt they feel and the loss they experience for her and the baby she aborted.
It can be no other way, for this weight – this hurt - is a testimony that the staff and volunteers of PMCs understand the truth. Women enter their centers carrying living babies inside their bodies, babies who often have no protected right to continue living. But, inside these centers, these servants are ready and waiting to help them find the truth, support, and hope they need to choose life for their babies.
There are over 3000 pregnancy help centers in the U.S. Each is served by staff and volunteers who daily carry the weight of an abortion-determined culture. Will you remember to pray for them?
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
