Choosing life

Photos by Andrew Junker/CATHOLIC SUN

Kristy Newman sits with her daughter Baylee at their home Jan. 13. Kristy and her husband, Lee, adopted Baylee about a year ago through Catholic Charities. Below: Melissa Noriega-Poure and Kay Allen stand outside 1st Way Pregnancy Resource Center Jan. 7. They spearheaded the new collaboration between Catholic Charities and 1st Way. Bottom: Lee and Kristy Newman enjoy some playtime with their daughter Baylee.

Adoption offers mothers in crisis pregnancies a positive alternative

Kristy and Lee Newman had been trying to get pregnant for three years.

Like many couples in their position, they had tried everything, including fertility treatments. After a while, though, they became convinced that for a multitude of reasons the treatments were not the avenue they should pursue.

So, they began to pray about their situation.

This led them in October 2007 to Catholic Charities, an organization that has been placing children with adoptive parents for decades. It turned out to be — quite literally — the answer to their prayers.

“From our first meeting, Lee and I just felt like we were where we were meant to be,” Kristy said. “When we left the first meeting we kept trying to figure out if we knew some of the staff from somewhere else because they felt so familiar. It was very odd, but very reassuring.”

Exploring adoption with Catholic Charities is a different experience than with many other agencies. It’s a process built on education and discovery more than anything else — discovering what is best for the child and the birth and adoptive parents.

To that end, the Newmans met with potential birthparents in an environment of openness. They had a counselor, and the potential birthparents had a different counselor to make sure there was no conflict of interest. It was the perfect fit.

“It was important to us that our child’s birthparents felt supported and were given all of their options so that they knew they were making the best decision for them and their child,” Newman said. “Adoption is a very intimate and emotional process and it was important to us that our agency had that personal feeling.”

After about a year of this, the Newmans brought home Baylee when she was two days old. She celebrated her first birthday Jan. 10.

Whether they knew it or not, during this entire process, the Newmans were also participating in an effort championed by all Catholic agencies to foster a new culture of life.

It’s a culture marked by compassion, honesty and a refusal to accept the oft-held presumption that, in an unplanned pregnancy, the life of the woman must be pitted against the life of her child.

It’s also a culture that marks a significant gain locally with a new partnership between Catholic Charities and 1st Way Pregnancy Resource Center.

‘We’re going to be here for you’

On the corner of Fifth Street and McDowell near downtown Phoenix is 1st Way. It’s a home, not just in atmosphere, but in architectural fact.

Every year, 4,000 women pass through its doors, many in various stages of despair or confusion. They think they might be pregnant, and are looking for someone to help them.

First they meet Eleanor Espericueta, the receptionist, whom Kay Allen, executive director of 1st Way, describes as their most important employee. Then, they can take a free pregnancy test and meet with a counselor.

“We respect these women. Right now, it’s like it’s her life or the baby’s life. That’s the whole crux of the pro-abortion thing: It’s my life and it’s my choice,” Allen said. “The fact of the matter is it is her life and her choice. What a lot of people are unwilling to look at is she has to make this choice.”

“Most women choose an abortion because they’ve been abandoned. We’ve never met a women who was excited to have an abortion,” she said. “It’s a desperate, last resort, because no one is there for her.”

It’s 1st Way’s unofficial motto to be there for the woman. To that end, they provide everything for her and the person growing inside of her — free of charge.

A representative of Arizona Health Care Cost Containment Program — AHCCCS, the state’s Medicaid program — comes down to the house to sign the woman up for health care if she doesn’t have some already.

As part of that program, even if the woman only qualifies for emergency care, the agency’s on-call obstetrician-gynecologist will provide for 14 pre-natal visits and deliver the woman’s child for free at St. Joseph Hospital and Medical Center.

Then, 1st Way will enroll the woman in pre-natal classes and will give her diapers and baby clothes if she has other children. Perhaps most significant in recent years is the ultrasound machine that 1st Way owns.

“Once she gets in the ultrasound room, she gets to see her baby and we can start talking about ‘baby’ for the first time,” Allen said. “Once she gets in there, her barriers start breaking down. We start talking about all the services we can offer her at that time. When they start hearing about these things, they often say, ‘Why do you guys do this?’”

They do this, Allen said, because they genuinely care about the woman. They respect her dignity and recognize the difficult and seemingly intractable place she finds herself in. They want to do what’s best for her and her child.

That’s why 1st Way’s new partnership with Catholic Charities is so important. Because even though adoption is sometimes the best scenario for these women and their children, it’s rarely been utilized by clients at 1st Way. In fact, they only place about two children a year with adoptive parents, and that’s out of 4,000 unique visits.

Overcoming stigma

Catholic Charities makes clear whenever asked that they don’t see themselves as an adoption agency. They try to make this clear in the language they choose to describe their services. They offer “pregnancy counselors” to women and explore all “birth options.” It may all seem like an academic exercise in semantics, but it’s important, says Melissa Noriega-Poure of Catholic Charities.

“We want to make sure the pregnant woman is not making the decision to ‘give up’ the child,” Noriega-Poure said. “You’re not ‘giving up’ your child at all. You’re placing your child in a loving home. And it’s not like you don’t love your child; you’re making a loving decision.”

In fact, there’s a prevalent stigma attached to adoption that permeates the culture. When 1st Way first started exploring the possibility of partnering with an adoption agency, they were immediately attracted to the shared values held by Catholic Charities.

While talking about their difficulties in promoting adoption in the cases where it was the best option for mother and child, Catholic Charities asked Allen what prejudices existed among her staff.

“I didn’t think we had any,” Allen said. “They said, ‘You’d be surprised.’”

And she was. For many reasons, her personnel weren’t even bringing up the option of adoption with their clients. Some knew of bad experiences with private adoptions in the past. Some saw that the clients wouldn’t even think of adoption in the first place, so what was the point?

It was a problem.

Now, Catholic Charities will provide a pregnancy counselor at 1st Way. The counselor will be able to explain that the end of the process isn’t necessarily adoption. That’s just one option that may fit the family and child best.

What used to be cloaked in secrecy is now in the open with Catholic Charities. The Newmans grew to be close with the birthparents of Baylee and often have them over for dinner and family events.

“We really loved getting to know them and really were just mesmerized by this couple making such a sacrifice of love for their child,” Newman said. “We fell in love with them. Lee and I feel that having an open relationship and allowing Baylee to grow up knowing them is really wonderful. A child can never have too many people to love them.”

The Newmans’ experience is the new face of adoption with Catholic Charities. Noriega-Poure views it as a matter of pro-life justice.

“Pro-life is about being from conception to a natural end. That’s why adoption matters your whole life,” she said. “It’s about helping people feel empowered to making life-affirming choices throughout the entire process.”

Allen agreed.

“We’re pro-family and we want to bring Christ into people’s lives. That means wholeness,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important for us to recognize the dignity of the woman as she walks through the door.”