Today I have meetings in regards to Aid to Women, a crisis pregnancy center in Toronto on whose board I sit, so blogging will be light to non-existent today and tomorrow (Wednesday is production day). Here’s a story on ATW that The Interim ran earlier this year. In Canada, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of such centers who reach out to women to help them choose life by providing material, emotional, and (when welcomed) spiritual support. It is often called the front-line of the pro-life movement and it is where the abortion issue is very real. Many babies are saved, but the volunteers and workers see many women who do not choose life. Many women who are considering having an abortion are happy and fortunate that CPCs are there to help them because while the the abortion rhetoric is about choice, many do not believe they have a choice because of the circumstances they find themselves in: poor, alone, confused, fearful. Crisis pregnancy centers help desperate women see their choices more clearly and many of them then embrace the life they are caring for inside them. I am very proud to serve Aid to Women and by extension the hundreds of women and children it helps in Toronto.
I encourage you to read, the National Catholic Register’s story on a pro-life counselling center in Maryland or Mark Pickup’s post marking the 25th anniversary of the Pregnancy Care Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, which he helped found. Pickup notes that at the celebratory banquet he met a teenager who had been saved by the workers and volunteers at the PCC. At Aid to Women, we used to have a bulletin board with pictures of saved babies. That teenager and those babies are the legacy of hundreds of volunteers who have given hope to women who faced real or imagined desperate circumstances, but all of whom needed something other than having a doctor kill their unborn baby. Imagine the legacy photos of the abortionist’s handiwork.
Please support your local crisis pregnancy centers. Do so by volunteering and donating. Nothing you give is too small and by doing so you will be helping women and their children.
In Assorted Links this morning we noted the situation in Baltimore where city council might require crisis pregnancy centers to advertise the fact that they do not provide abortion or birth control services. This is the kind of official harassment such facilities and pro-lifers routinely face. In Ontario, British Columbia and parts of Quebec, there are “bubble zones” (by either law or injunction) that prevent any pro-life activities including silent praying and sidewalk counselling near abortion facilities.
