Three pregnancy care centers report on effects since Roe v. Wade was overturned

Hope’s Kids Closet resale shop, a service of Hope Resource Center pregnancy care center in Bedford, is filled with children’s clothes and other items to help pregnant and parenting mothers. Henry County Pregnancy Care Center in New Castle and Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center in Terre Haute also offer clothing to help support moms and children. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)

By Natalie Hoefer

BEDFORD—Pro-life advocates rejoiced on June 24 last year when the United States Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that affirmed the constitutional right to abortion.

But many leaders active in the pro-life movement also offered words of caution.

Pregnant and parenting moms in need “really need to be accompanied to the point they know they’re loved and supported,” Brie Anne Varick, director of the archdiocesan Office of Human Life and Dignity said in a July 1, 2022, Criterion article. “Then they can choose life because they know they are loved by God, supported by the community and can give their child a good life or have the courage to give their child to a family who can give them a good life.

“This is where our pro-life efforts need to go. Walk with moms in need, love them into life and help them choose life.”

Pregnancy care centers (PCCs) play a crucial role in those efforts. (Related story: Bedford pregnancy care center strives for women in need to ‘know that there’s hope’)

Nine months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling, The Criterion checked with three pregnancy care centers to learn about their experiences in the post-Roe world.

Here are the experiences of Hope Resource Center in Bedford, Henry County Pregnancy Care Center in New Castle and Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center in Terre Haute.

More impact from COVID than recent events

In her more than 26 years as executive director of Henry County Pregnancy Care Center (HCPCC), Janet Modjeski has seen the center’s numbers “come and go.”

Like the other two PCCs surveyed, HCPCC offers a range of services, all cost-free. Its website lists nine sources of help, including pregnancy testing, maternity and infant supplies, parenting education and more.

But has HCPCC seen an increase in numbers since the overturning of Roe v. Wade? Not so much, says Modjeski.

“Since COVID we went down in numbers, but we’re starting to pick up a bit now,” she says.

“But this is a very conservative area, not like a college town. Mainly we see girls whose families step up to the plate, so they keep their babies, and their families help.”

That reality does not indicate a lack of need for help for pregnant and parenting moms in the area.

“Formula and diapers—we can never have enough,” Modjeski notes with a laugh. She says the same is true for baby food and baby wipes.

“We give them out depending on availability, so there’s always a need.”

HCPCC also accepts and offers “new and gently used” clothes for babies and children.

“Women can come in once a month and choose several items per child,” she says. “We don’t hoard—we want them to have what they need.”

Like the need for items, volunteer needs are ongoing, says Modjeski.

“We need volunteer peer counselors, people to help with pregnancy tests, people to meet clients and get them what they need,” she enumerates. “We couldn’t do this without lots of volunteers.”

Labeled as ‘deceptive,’ but surveys say otherwise

Across the state in Terre Haute, Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center (WVCPC) has seen a change in numbers since last summer. The overturning of Roe has had an impact—but so has Google Ads, and not in a good way.

“Most of our target audience are searching [the Internet] for ‘abortion’ using Google” as their search engine, says WVCPC executive director Sharon Carey.

“When we started doing Google Ads, we would sometimes come up before Planned Parenthood” in such searches, she explains. “People would click on us and continue through to set up an appointment” for an ultrasound.

Between that and a Choose Life marketing campaign, WVCPC “saw a huge increase in abortion-determined women seeking an ultrasound,” says Carey. Which is a good thing, she adds, because such women could possibly learn about the organization’s many services to help mothers choose life for their unborn baby or receive help after an abortion.

But the numbers dipped in August of 2022, a situation that led Carey to discover a change in Google Ads’ algorithms.

According to a Google document, in July 2022 Google Ads modified its “abortion ads certification” requirements to exclude “organizations that provide pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, abortion counseling, general abortion information, abortion referrals, or that otherwise serve pregnant individuals but do not provide abortions.”

In other words, pregnancy care centers.

“Google didn’t stop our ads, because we paid for them, but they did change their algorithms on who can find us,” says Carey. “So now if you search for ‘abortion’ or ‘abortion pill,’ they have marked pregnancy care centers so they cannot come up.”

The Google document states the changes were instituted due to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) “recent removal of the in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills in December 2021.”

But Carey sees another motive at play.

After the overturning of Roe, “Pressure was on Google to remove ads because [pregnancy care centers] were being labeled misleading and deceptive,” she says—the exact words used by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to describe PCCs in an Aug. 5, 2022, press release.

Still, WVCPC saw an upward trend between 2021 and 2022 in the number of new visits, ultrasounds, the number attending parenting classes and the number of pregnancy tests.

Those figures don’t include other services WVCPC offers, like providing clothing, diapers, baby food and other material items; Bible studies; and a fatherhood program in a local prison.

Nor do the numbers reflect women seeking care after abortion.

“Most women can’t go back to the place where they got their [abortion] pills for help if there are problems,” says Carey. We say, ‘If you have struggles after an abortion, our doctors and nurse practitioners will see you. We’ll help you walk through this together.’ ”

Those on the pro-choice side “say pregnancy care centers force and push women,” Carey notes. “But in our anonymous exit surveys, women say this place was ‘kind, walked me through the options, didn’t judge me, loved me and supported me.’ ”

‘We are definitely busier’

In Bedford, Hope Resource Center (HRC) “is exploding” since the overturning of Roe last summer, says executive director April Haskett.

Between 2021 and 2022, the number of new clients rose from 163 to 312.

Most staggering is the increase in the number of individual services provided, from 1,233 in 2021 to nearly 4,900 in 2022.

“Seven years ago, that number was just 300,” Haskett notes.

“We are definitely busier” since the overturning of Roe, she says. “We are seeing a lot more clients come for an ultrasound just to find out how far along they are.”

The 2023 figures are already set to break the 2022 records. Between January and March, HRC already has served nearly half the number of clients it served in all of 2022. And with 1,487 individual services already provided, the 2023 total could exceed 5,500.

“The board voted a few weeks ago to add five additional staff—a men’s director, two nurses, a case manager and a part-time staff for our children’s clothing store,” says Haskett.

She lauds the local community for its support of HRC and its many services. The funds raised by the organization’s annual gala is proof positive of that support.

“Before 2021, our record amount [raised] was $32,000,” says Haskett. “In 2021 we raised around $72,000, and we thought that was a big year. But last year we raised $100,000. I was blown away!”

Hope Resource Center is needed now more than ever. Not only is it Lawrence County’s only pregnancy care center, says Haskett, but “our local hospital closed.” To meet the gap in need, she says, “We had two more nurses trained in limited obstetric ultrasound [use] over the last two weeks, and we are adding a second ultrasound suite.”

Hopeful for the future

No discussion of the current experience of pregnancy care centers in Indiana is complete without addressing the legal battle for unborn life in the state.

That battle is curently at a standstill.

Within weeks of the Sept. 15, 2022, enactment of Indiana’s new legislation protecting pre-born children except in cases of rape, incest and specific medical conditions, a lawsuit was filed. A temporary injunction was placed on the law—meaning abortions remain available as they were prior to its enactment.

The Indiana Supreme Court is reviewing the law to determine its constitutionality. No deadline for the decision has been announced.

While the fate of Indiana’s lifesaving law is unknown, pregnancy care centers remain on the frontline of the effort to walk with pregnant and parenting moms in need.

Carey of WVCPC is hopeful.

“We’re trying to prepare for how many women we’ll serve once the law is reinstated,” she says. “In the meantime, we’re trying to meet all the immediate needs of women and moms in need right now.”
 

(For information on these PCCs or to find out how you can support them, their contact information is as follows: Henry County Pregnancy Care Center, call 765-529-7298 or go to hcpcc.org; Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center, call 812-405-4407 or go to wabashvalleypregnancy.com; Hope Resource Center, call 812-275 or go to hoperesourcectr.org. For a list of resources that help pregnant women as well as parents and children in central and southern Indiana, go to www.walkingwithmomsindy.org. If you know of a life-affirming service in central and southern Indiana not included on the site, contact the Office of Human Life and Dignity, at 317-236-1543 or email bvarick@archindy.org.) †