St. Louis, Mo., Jul 18, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- With a law banning abortions after roughly eight weeks of pregnancy and one remaining abortion clinic whose licensure is being debated in court, Missouri has been described as a state “hostile” to abortion.
“The state makes it extremely hostile for an abortion facility to remain open,” Ushma Upadhyay, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California San Francisco, told Vox for a story on the last abortion clinic in the state.
While the state may be increasingly restricting abortions, it has numerous programs that provide a wealth of resources and support to thousands of women in need each year who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant, pro-life advocates told CNA.
“Our aim is for those moms who want to give life to their baby, we provide them with all sorts of alternatives (to abortion),” Michael Meehan, Executive Director of Good Shepherd Children and Family Services in St. Louis, told CNA.
Good Shepherd is one of eight agencies operated through Catholic Charities in St. Louis that are available to pregnant women in need, and provide them with a variety of resources and support, including housing, education classes and scholarships, counseling, and substance abuse recovery.
Good Shepherd itself has a maternity shelter and transitional living program for teen and young adult moms, who may otherwise be homeless, that can accommodate 14 mom and 20 babies, for just a few days or up to a year or longer, depending on the needs of the moms and children, Meehan said.
Besides group and individual counseling, on-staff nurses, and classes on life skills, parenting, and child development, completing a high school education is a requirement for moms in the program, Meehan told CNA.
“That’s a mandatory part of being here is re-engaging in your education. It opens and closes the single biggest bunch of doors for independence,” Meehan said. Thus, Good Shepherd has a full-time education advocate who is a certified teacher, and helps any mom who has not yet completed high school or gotten her GED.
There is also a home visitation program for women who have housing but need other kinds of support throughout their pregnancy, Meehan said. Good Shepherd provides those women with case management, crisis management for problems such as domestic violence, connection to good health care, and referrals to additional needed resources.
And because abuse and neglect prevention is a core part of Good Shepherd’s program, they can continue providing support through home visits until the youngest child in the home is three years old, he added.
“We want to ensure that moms and babies get the best possible start in life,” Meehan said.
They also have foster care and adoption services for women who feel that they are unable to parent their child but still want to provide a better life for them, Meehan said.
“We’re hopeful that we can get the word out that adoption is an option for women who might otherwise consider abortion,” he said.
When asked if he had noticed an increase in women seeking services from Good Shepherd in light of there being one remaining abortion clinic in the state, Meehan said that they have noticed an increase, but that they are unsure whether it is directly connected to the closing abortion clinics.
According to data from 2005 from the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice organization, the top three reasons that women seek abortions are: having a child would interfere with education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%).
Knowing these statistics, Meehand said that it is Good Shepherd’s goal to help women remove as many of these obstacles as possible so that they can keep their babies.
“We are about removing perceived obstacles,” he said, “which typically isn’t a baby. It’s a violent relationship, it’s pending homelessness, it’s deep and desperate poverty, it’s a perception that this is impossible, I’m just not going to be able to do it, the baby would be better off not being brought into the world.”
In recent years, Meehan said, Good Shepherd has done even more work to “get the word out” about their services so that women know what resources are available to them.
“The message is that the Church wants to control women, the Church doesn’t care about women, the Church only cares about women until they’re born and then couldn’t care less,” Meehan said. Those messages are easily proved false, he said, “if anybody bothered to look a smidge more deeply.”
And it’s not just the Catholic Church, or even religious organizations, that are providing life-affirming help to women and children in the St. Louis area.
Birthright of St. Louis is a secular non-profit that does not accept state or federal government funding. The goal of the agency is to provide women with the care and support that they need to be able to handle unexpected pregnancies, and to offer life-affirming alternatives to abortion.
“We just focus on the woman one-on-one,” Maureen Zink, the executive director of Birthright in St. Louis, told CNA.
“Our focus is that you have to be a quiet place where women can come where they don’t feel like you have an agenda and just talk about why this pregnancy is so hard for them,” she said.
Birthright provides a variety of services to women free of charge, Zink said, including professional counseling, pregnancy testing, and financial aid and scholarships for women who are still in school.
They also have a program called Melissa Smiles, which supports mothers whose children are disabled and connects them to the resources that they need, she said.
“Pretty much anything a woman needs, we’ll work with her,” Zink said. “We love to be able to take care of the women, so that they can take care of their babies. The goal is that they’ll be able to provide a loving, safe, and nurturing healthy home for their babies.”
Every service provided by Birthright is free, Zink said, but women do not necessarily have to demonstrate a financial need to seek out help from the agency.
“There’s college women that find out that they’re pregnant and they’re overwhelmed and they need help sorting it out,” Zink said.
Zink said that she has not noticed an uptick in women seeking services from Birthright in light of the closure of all but one abortion clinic; things have remained “pretty steady.”
“I think our services will always be needed no matter what the laws are,” she added.
Mary Varni, program manager with the Respect Life Apostolate of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, sent CNA a list of resources, both Catholic and secular, that they use to help connect women facing unexpected pregnancies with the resources that they need.
Varni noted that while many women in crisis pregnancies are poor, financial stability is often not the only thing they need.
“Based on our experience, if a woman is pregnant and concerned about her financial situation, she may also be concerned about the safety of the residence or neighborhood in which the child will grow up, the education the child will be able to receive, the child’s health care, or even basic needs like food and shelter,” she said.
“There is help to address all of these concerns, and by sharing the resources we know can help with the women we serve, we hope they will see that life is the right choice.”
Besides Good Shepherd, Catholic Charities in St. Louis also operates three additional shelters, Varni said: the Queen of Peace Center, which offers family-centered behavioral health care for women (and their children) who are overcoming substance use disorders; the St. Patrick Center, which helps people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless; and Marygrove, which offers an independent housing program that provides shelter and services to pregnant teens and young adults.
Furthermore, the Respect Life Apostolate offers the Blessed Theresa of Calcutta fund, which offers financial aid to expectant or recent parents within the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
There is also Our Lady’s Inn, which shelters and supports homeless women and their babies, and Thrive St. Louis, a women’s clinic that provides pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, parenting and life-skills classes, and referrals for housing, medical care, counseling, utility assistance, food and more.
The Society of St Vincent DePaul in St. Louis also provides food and financial resources, such as assistance with housing and transportation, to those in need, Varni said. They are also currently considering a closer partnership with Good Shepherd to more directly assist pregnant women and families in need.
Varni said that when a woman comes to the apostolate or the archdiocese for help, their first job is to listen to what those women are struggling with.
“We let them know they are not alone in their struggles, which is why there are so many resources available to assist with their needs, and alternatives to abortion that can help support a healthy life for their baby,” she said.
“We remind them that their pregnancy is a gift from God, and that He chose them to carry their baby for a reason He knows better than all of us—and that because He loves them, there is always hope. They will be able to overcome the challenges they are facing.”
The licensure of Missouri’s last operating abortion clinic, a Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, is still being debated in court. The next hearing over the clinic’s license is not until October, and a judge has ruled that the clinic can still offer abortions through that hearing.
But despite some of the hand-wringing over what could be the closure of the last abortion clinic in the state, Meehan said it would be a good thing – and that women will still get the help that they need, through the many services available in the state.
“People lose track of the fact that…we’re talking about well over 600,000 babies dying every year (from abortion),” he said. “That’s a lot.”
“If Planned Parenthood disappeared today, the need of our population could be met, that’s not an issue. They’re not nearly as indispensable as they would have us believe.”
[…]
Another door-stop USCCB document on “Eucharistic coherence” with page after page of pious blather that a 2nd grader preparing for First Communion could summarize in a simple declarative sentence completely misses the point. Biden is a heretic and is already excommunicated latae sententiae. The bishops need to declare Biden’s excommunication formally and publicly and then proceed down the line from there. U.S. Catholics have had enough. Actions, not words, are what is demanded.
Problem is this action would not only apply to Biden. It would apply to millions of Catholics, who might stop coming to church and no longer financially supporting the church. Then the church could face a dilemma. How important is money?
Also this could lead to schism. Do we really want another of these? Maybe some do.
Valid points, but maybe a spiritual housecleaning is necessary at this point. Better to have a smaller, faithful Church than a morally and spiritually corrupted larger body.
At least those “millions of Catholics” will have ceased committing sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin.
John 6:66
Great Expectations. Biden’s expectation [a shameless excerpt from a previous comment] has an imperious tone, solemnly urging the Church to desist from its faithful practice, refusing what’s owed him over a mere trifle, a predisposed approval of the murder of approx 70 million innocents since 1973. The president lives in a world bereft of “rules”, except his own, with license presumptuously due to separation of Church and State. He recently shouted, arms flailing, that he’s made far greater radical change to our Nation than any predecessor. Destructive changes to timeless moral doctrine on life, family, and sexuality. An infant in the womb is in greater danger during his administration than at any time in history. What’s at stake for the Church isn’t political expediency. Nor maintaining order and cohesion. Neither is separation of Church and State at issue. Rather it’s the foundation of a just society in which religious freedom and the right to uphold its values. Values that are the source of that foundation for justice.
“An infant in the womb is in greater danger during his administration than at any time in history.”
Well said.
I think we can have a pretty good idea of the bishops who supported going forward on the document, if we’ve been following this story. Several bishops have come forward, besides Cordileone and others who have been forthright thus far.
“Hope springs eternal . . .”
So are we going to deny communion to those Catholic politicians advocating the death penalty?
While on this path what about those who campaigned for sending US troops to Iraq?
Oh, please. Support for abortion, “gay marriage”, and trans-sexualism is different, in kind and degree, from prudential judgments re: capital punishment and national defense.
Oh, please, the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with national defence. It was an act of un godly evil, in every respect it was a murderous pursuit! And one can argue that prudential judgements as applied to capitol punishment can also apply to the issue of Abortion. It is my personal position that I am against abortion, full stop. However to what degree or extent, in a democratic republic where there is the separation of church and state, can I insist that an other, who does not share my faith in Jesus, be beholden to a law that may be against the wishes of a voting majority who are non christian?
The answer you seek is no, because as the court of the Pontiff Francis has reluctantly implied by its “eloquent ambiguity,” (to quote one apologist) the death penalty cannot be declared immoral.
This is as compared to abortion, fornication, sodomy, false witness and idolatry, which, among other things, remain mortal sins.
I have no academic qualifications in Ethics unlike Mr Weigel but a quick look at the Wikipedia page on the subject states:
[ In ethics, a “prudential judgment” is one where the circumstances must be weighed to determine the correct action. Generally, it applies to situations where two people could weigh the circumstances differently and ethically come to different conclusions.
For instance, in the theory of just war, the government of a nation must weigh whether the harms they suffer are more than the harms that would be produced by their going to war against another nation that is harming them; the decision whether to go to war is therefore a prudential judgment.]
Mr Weigel, an author and academically qualified ethicist who has written extensively on the subject of Just War Theory was a signatory to the Project For a New American Centurary’s Statement of Principals, accompanied by the political elite of the Bush administration. His support for invasion of Iraq is on record, in effect a Catholic blessing of this act of war: https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/428/article/just-war-case-war
Why is Mr Weigle, a celebrated contributor of articles to CWR not the subject of serious discourse with respect to the sanctity of life?
One could mount an argument that he should be denied communion!
An ordinary and commonplace and “private thing,” says the hollow-suited and sleepwalking occupier of the White House…
When Hannah Arendt interviewed Adolf Eichmann, the captured overseer of Hitler’s “final solution” to the Jews, she found him to be “quite ordinary, commonplace, and something neither demonic nor monstrous” (Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 1964).
Biden has frequently said that he personally opposes abortion but that he “won’t impose his beliefs on anyone else”, or some such blather.
Mr. President – we’re not asking you to do that, we are merely asking you to DEFEND what you say your beliefs are, and there is NO sign that you have any intention to do so.