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CDA plays critical role in local pro-life services
By Ambria Hammel, The Catholic Sun
February 7, 2008
For more than 15 years, the number of abortions in the United States has continued to decrease. Local Catholics like to think they played an active role in that.
They welcome the unborn by advancing the culture of life from the moment of conception and through outreach efforts at pro-life centers.
Catholics throughout the diocese can ensure such outreach continues by donating to and praying for the Charity and Development Appeal.
The annual appeal supports more than 70 charitable ministries including a handful of pro-life organizations. Aid to Women Center in Tempe, 1st Way Pregnancy Center, Phoenix Natural Family Planning Center, Rachel’s Vineyard retreats and Maggie’s Place all receive CDA funding.
Catholics who contribute to the CDA will help support a culture of life by sustaining these agencies through prayer or financial support. Their efforts will ensure local pro-life agencies have enough resources to help women facing unexpected pregnancies choose life for their children.
Roughly 3,300 clients visited 1st Way last year with nearly 500 receiving abortion counseling.
“They’ll leave here supercharged and resolved to keep the baby,” said Laurie Pittsenbarger, ultrasound nurse manager at 1st Way. The pregnancy support center offers pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and parenting resources among other services.
Pittsenbarger said the clients’ faith sometimes weakens when they get home and a friend, boyfriend or one of the grandparents-to-be puts pressure on them to have an abortion or reminds them of the expense of raising a child.
That’s why 1st Way offers free maternity clothes and baby clothes, food and supplies. Pittsenbarger said such services, alongside her personal follow-up with clients throughout the pregnancy, helps calm the fear of “not being ready” or not being able to afford having the baby. She said those are common reasons parents seek an abortion.
When Ashley got pregnant at 23, a friend suggested that she have an abortion — but she didn’t listen. Ashley and her boyfriend briefly considered adoption.
“Coming in here really kind of changed our mind,” she said when she and her boyfriend saw the ultrasound at 1st Way. “I think it kind of melted him, too.”
He stopped drinking after seeing the ultrasound and remains involved in his now 2-month-old daughter’s life.
Ashley is thankful for places like 1st Way that help women make the right choice about their pregnancy.
“It’s not the end of the world as people think it is. She’s my greatest accomplishment,” Ashley said of her daughter.
Other mothers are discovering that, too. Dianna Contreras, director of Aid to Women Center, said its prenatal care is becoming as common as pregnancy testing.
“If a girl is planning on having an abortion partly because of finances, we try to offer free prenatal care to her. We have seen this make the difference between the life and death of a baby,” Contreras said.
Aid to Women Center sees roughly 50 patients every week for pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and medical care. Both pro-life centers need funding and volunteers to expand their services.
A couple of weeks ago Pittsenbarger met a woman at 1st Way who came to the center from an abortion clinic. She left the clinic after staff asked for more money because she was pregnant with twins.
That’s when the lives of the unborn babies she was carrying became real to her. The woman decided to have the babies.
“The hardest ultrasounds to do are the ones who’ve had an abortion” in the past and are pregnant again, Pittsenbarger said. “I’m sure she’s thinking, ‘what have I done?’”
The local Church reaches out to post-abortive parents, too, through Rachel’s Vineyard retreats, another CDA-supported group. These weekend retreats are offered several times a year throughout the diocese.
They serve as a time for post-abortive parents to deeply enter and work through the grieving process and identify how the abortion still affects the parents’ daily life.
Lisa Cascella, intake coordinator for Rachel’s Vineyard in Prescott Valley, said most men and women begin the retreat scared. They’re afraid someone will recognize them and discover they took part in an abortion. Most of them talk about the experience and the guilt for the first time during the retreat.
After working through Scripture, and having a memorial service for the unborn, Cascella said the retreatants leave two days later smiling and standing up straight.
Rachel’s Vineyard retreats help post-abortive parents experience forgiveness, something Cascella said more than 100 million parents need nationwide. There have been roughly 50 million abortions in the United States since 1973.
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