Quiet Service and a Life of Difference.(Brief Article)

In this issue honoring the Movement's cadre of wonderful grassroots activists, we would be seriously amiss if we overlooked the countless volunteers and professionals who in addition to all they do to help NRLC chapters also quietly serve mothers and their children at pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and adoption agencies. Given the three to four thousand such organizations around the country, one likely serves women and saves lives within your own community, perhaps with the support of people you know.

It is easy to take for granted the work that center staff and volunteers do. We in the pro-life movement have all been unfairly accused of doing nothing to help women through the problems that drive them toward abortion. Many of us individually help women and corporately as members of chapters which collect and donate baby clothes for crisis pregnancy centers. But until I spoke with pregnancy center staff and volunteered for one myself, I did not appreciate just how challenging pregnancy center work is for those who do it and how vitally important this much-unheralded contribution is to the future of the pro-life movement.

In the October 16, 1995, issue of The New Republic, feminist Naomi Wolf voiced a disturbing position: "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die."

But pregnancy center staff and volunteers are on the front lines of showing the nation how mothers' complex problems can be solved without abortion.

The answer is practical as well as cultural, and will differ with every mother. It begins with the distinguishing feature of pregnancy centers: counselors' compassionate and nonjudgmental focus on the woman.

In its volunteer training manual, one organization encourages counselors at its affiliated centers to use what it calls the "LOVE Approach." A visit with a client must begin with listening and learning.

The manual instructs, "Focus on her and her situation, give her your total attention, ask good questions to draw her out, develop trust, and begin a relationship without jumping in to give her advice or solve her problem! ... Only after fully getting to know the client and her situation should the helper begin to help the client examine options in a factual, loving, and caring way."