Why Abortion Advocates Should Support Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is running a massive taxpayer-funded PR campaign to warn citizens about the dangers of Pregnancy Help Medical Clinics (PHMC). Why? Because, Healy charged, the people who run these PHMC have “a prolife and religious bias.”
Approximately half the country has a pro-life bias. A 2023 Gallup poll says that 82% of Americans identify as religious or spiritual. I appeal to Governor Healy and those in leadership nationwide, please, don’t get on the wrong side of yet another 80/20 issue. Pregnancy Help Clinics are good for America, especially for those who defend legal abortion as good for women.
It’s true, a clear and present pro-life and religious bias is at work in a PHMC. For the record, this is the same bias that prompted Rev. John Barlett (1784–1849) to found Mass General Hospital, one of the oldest hospitals in America today. He was a pro-life Christian who wanted to save lives in the name of Jesus. Dangerous? Really? Even now, there are doctors, nurses and other medical professionals working at Mass General who are motivated by a love of life and a Christian worldview. Should we warn people to stay away?
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Truth is, almost all the hospitals and clinics in the world today, especially those that are over 100 years old, were started by people with a pro-life and religious bias. The world has been well served by them. Pro-life and religious bias drove the medical missionary, Dr. Alexander Pearson, to leave the comforts of home and introduce the smallpox vaccine to China in 1805. By 1901, medical missionaries in China were operating 128 hospitals and 245 dispensaries. They recorded 1,674,571 people treated out of the same bias of Christian care that motivates people to set up Pregnancy Help Medical Clinics, to provide testing, ultrasound verification of pregnancy and practical support.
In full disclosure, I was the founder of six Pregnancy Help Medical Clinics in the greater Boston area, the first one opening in 1992. As a Baptist pastor serving in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, I soon learned from my people the fear and pressure women and couples in a pregnancy-related crisis experience. One after another, with many tears, I heard, “I regret my abortion.” As they told me of their lived experience regarding abortion, they also indicated what kind of help, if available to them, would have saved their baby.
With this information, a group of us decided to offer such help to women and couples. We were equipped with nothing more than neighborly love and the paradigm of the good Samaritan — draw near, provide personal and practical intervention. Many who joined us had their own past abortion story. Such people are not judgmental. They are sympathetic and knowledgeable, just like former addicts, who serve in recovery programs, tend to be.
Like all other crisis intervention services (suicide hotlines, veterans centers, Alcoholics Anonymous, etc.), pregnancy help started as a grassroots movement. They then trained themselves in what today is called “critical incident stress management” or crisis intervention. They learned to recognize the common presenting characteristics of human crisis — symptoms of stress, a sense of panic or defeat, a time of lowered efficiency — and provided a safe environment for those in a pregnancy-related crisis to slow down, think, understand and look for an option more in line with their true heart values.
The bedrock principle that makes any medical treatment ethical is so foundational that it’s called the doctrine of informed consent (a decidedly religious term). The textbook on comprehensive abortion training, A Clinician’s Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion, teaches that “Informed consent must include three elements: (1) patients must have the capacity to make decisions about their care; (2) their participation in these decisions must be without coercion or manipulation; and (3) patients must be given appropriate information germane to making the particular decision.” It goes on to say, “The goal of the informed consent process is to protect personal well-being and individual autonomy by providing information on the procedure, risks, and alternatives to the medical intervention being considered.” And it concludes, “Identifying predisposing factors for negative reactions before the abortion allows the provider to address the specific needs of patients and helps fortify their coping resources.” It includes a list of 14 negative after-abortion reactions to screen for prior to abortion, including “significant ambivalence” and “perceived coercion.”
It’s an 80/20 issue that this advice on pre-abortion screening for negative reactions to abortion is good for women. Even the National Abortion Federation says so! Their stamped endorsement is on the cover. Governor Healy may be confident, even thankful, that every woman who seeks an abortion after visiting a PHMC has been informed about the abortion procedures and the risks. And if in the process, a mother or couple welcome some help and decide, in spite of difficult circumstances, to have their baby, why not be glad? At least be neutral. Nothing happened to alter legal abortion in any way. 80/20!
It might be helpful to know that around the world, pregnancy help services are spreading, and it’s not political or controversial. In China, a few public hospitals are now offering pregnancy counseling on the same floor where abortion surgery is done. In Vietnam, too, hospitals are experimenting with “Counseling Corners” for women prior to their abortion. In hard places, like Cuba and Uganda, my organization, PassionLife, equips doctors with a hand-held ultrasound to help them help young mothers see and understand their pregnancy.
Even abortion doctors welcome the services of a PHMC, if for no other reason than it helps women who are ambivalent or feeling pressured by others. One such abortion doctor in Romania told me of his deep frustration that he did not have a pregnancy help counseling office nearby. “Some women are weeping and shaking when I start the process. I welcome you to open a pregnancy help office next to me. I would send these women to you to sort out,” he said. 80/20.
John Ensor, an ordained Evangelical pastor, has been a leader in the pro-life movement for over 30 years as a speaker, author, mentor and co-laborer. John serves as the President of PassionLife, where he concentrates on helping missionaries and indigenous Christian leaders serving in countries plagued by abortion to equip the church in bioethics and pregnancy crisis intervention services. He has been recognized in the “Legacy of Life” book as one of the fifty greatest pro-life leaders of the last 50 years. John is the co-host of the “PassionLife Podcast,” with PassionLife Executive Director, Mark Nicholson. Together, they discuss ministry updates and provide commentary on global current events.
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