Against the (false) accusation that pro-life people don’t care for the economic and social quandary of women thinking about abortion stands Mary Cunningham Agee, executive director of the Nurturing Network.
Mrs. Agee- business woman, mother and Christian- established the Nurturing Network in the aftermath of a miscarriage: ”If I could feel the intensity of pain and loss of a child I wanted,” she wondered, “how must other women have felt when they had been coerced by circumstances or people to surrender the life of their child to abortion? How deep was their grief or guilt?”
Drawing on the experience of her own crisis pregnancy, her managerial expertise and painstaking research into the typical abortion-seeker, Mrs. Agee launched the Nurturing Network in 1986.
For example, she learned that if an alternative had been clearly available, 8 out of 10 women who had abortions would have re-considered their decision. For this reason, Mrs. Agee resolved from the beginning that the Nurturing Network should be a safety net for pregnant women who felt hemmed in by an abortion-minded society.
From a base in Boise, Idaho this safety net is now cast throughout the whole of the U.S. Like other crisis pregnancy services, the Nurturing Network provides counselling, housing, medical and spiritual care. Hundreds or pro-life doctors, nurses, social workers and counselors are untied nationwide in a common effort to provide the mothers and their unborn children with loving and practical care through the pregnancy and for as long as necessary thereafter.
However, in the field of pregnancy counselling, the Nurturing Network has a number of unique features. For example, women who become pregnant in the midst of academics or business careers can transfer to co-operating schools or corporations. Or when a new mother faces pressure to abort from the father, friends, and family, the Nurturing Network will find her a temporary home with a good and loving family.
With a tiny staff and no fundraising to speak of, how did the Nurturing Network rescue 1,000 mothers and their babies in 1991? Mrs. Agee herself identifies the reason: prayer. “without prayer and the nourishment of the Eucharist each day, I am sure that my efforts would be fruitless toil,” she says from her Boise headquarters where staff and volunteers break twice a day to pray.
