By Shanna Flowers [email protected] 981-3220
A dark mahogany, butter-soft leather sofa beckons visitors into the homey room just inside the door of Roanoke’s Blue Ridge Women’s Center.
A throw blanket is casually draped across the back of the sofa; it’s the same color as the cranberry red pillows perched on nearby leather upholstered chairs. The warm mocha walls are bathed in soft lamp lighting, and a television perched overhead is barely audible.
The sitting room at the Christian-based, anti-abortion women’s center on Williamson Road is comfortable, cozy and welcoming.
The room at the Blue Ridge center is a different side of a movement often typified by attention-seeking protesters outside abortion clinics or in human chains along busy roads.
Two weeks ago, I visited the Blue Ridge center after one of its volunteers called me. She had taken issue with my characterization of social conservatives as lacking compassion for teen mothers.
She noted that several women’s centers, including Blue Ridge, treat unwed pregnant teens with kindness and concern.
So I met with Phil Holsinger, the center’s president and chief executive, as well as staff counselor Susie Amos and director of clinical services Brooke McGlothlin.
I wasn’t prepared to immediately warm to Holsinger and his staff.
But I did, and I developed a new respect for at least a portion of a movement I had thought of as one-dimensional.
Holsinger acknowledged there are some in the anti-abortion cause who are more aggressive in their efforts. But many are not, he added.
“Unfortunately, the rhetoric in our country is always argued from the extremes,” Holsinger said. “We’ve chosen to be the compassionate voice in the midst.”
Caring about mom, too
Established in 1984 as the Crisis Pregnancy Center of Roanoke, Blue Ridge provides free pregnancy testing and counseling to women of varying ages who are pregnant or think they might be. The center, which also has an office in Rocky Mount, also has free maternity clothes and baby items, such as strollers.
Its mission extends beyond getting the baby here but also helping the mother get on her feet.
The center serves about 400 women a year. During its 24 years, it has encountered 858 women who came through the doors considering abortion, but chose to have their babies instead, according to one of its brochures.
Clients include the unmarried and the married, McGlothlin said, and some men accompany their wives or girlfriends. Most of the women are between 18 and 24, but the clinic has seen 13-year-old girls and 50-year-old women.
McGlothlin said many women take over-the-counter pregnancy tests at home but seek a more reliable, laboratory-quality urine test at the clinic.
“More than that, they need someone to help them think through the situation, need someone outside the situation,” she said.
“We convey to the client that this is a safe place,” Amos said. “When the girls come in here, they have a high stress level. We just listen to them.”
Offering hope
Elizabeth Wagner showed up at the center about five months ago, single, pregnant and unemployed. The 21-year-old and her baby’s father were on rocky terms. She was afraid to tell her mother and fearful that her church would reject her.
She wanted her child, but in the swirl of confusion and stress, the option of abortion crossed her mind.
“I needed the confirmation,” Wagner said. “Susie sat down and talked to me and gave me hope.”
Today, Wagner has a job, and she and her mother get along fine. A recent sonogram shows her baby is a girl, and she’s thinking of names.
“I know it’s going to be tough and it’s going to be hard, but God has given me this baby for a reason, and I’m going to take it one step at a time,” she said.
A ministry
Like many others, Wagner learned about the center through word of mouth. Most of them know it is a Christian-based facility.
So they usually are not surprised if a counselor brings up their faith and asks them to speak about it as it relates to their situation, McGlothlin said.
She said counselors ask clients questions such as, “What do you think God thinks about this life you’re carrying? … Do you feel like God has an opinion? Does that matter to you?”
Amos noted that if someone doesn’t want to inject religion into the conversation, “we are not in their face with that.”
At the beginning, the staff informs women that it does not refer for abortions or perform abortions, McGlothlin said. Still, some women who have no intention of carrying their babies to term still visit, she said.
Some merely want to confirm their pregnancy. Others seek information about life skills classes the center offers to help them get their lives on track.
A summer/fall list of classes included childbirth, resume- writing and career counseling, budgeting and abortion recovery. The recovery class is for women who terminated a pregnancy months and even years ago and are struggling with the decision.
“There is no circumstance where we’d say, ‘You are not welcome here.’ We want to be a service to any woman who needs our help,” McGlothlin said.
A call for more workers
The center, has eight full- and part-time workers, and has an annual budget of $365,000. Individual donations make up 71 percent of the budget. Churches give 17 percent and businesses 12 percent.
Overseeing the operation is Holsinger, an ordained minister, former pastor, husband and father. He joined the center in February. Holsinger, who grew up in my hometown of Flint, Mich., is easygoing, engaging and not judgmental. He was not exactly what I expected of the CEO of an anti-abortion center.
Holsinger, 55, used to support abortion rights. Before he met his wife, Cindy, a previous girlfriend became pregnant. The young woman decided to have an abortion, and Holsinger backed her decision.
He said he became a Christian in 1984 and became “pro-life in my mind, not pro-life in my heart.”
His moment of full transformation came six years later. During recovery from testicular cancer, his doctor had told him Cindy should not get pregnant for at least 18 months because of the radiation treatment.
Holsinger had never told his wife about the doctor’s caution.
But one morning in 1990 as he shaved, his wife waved a home pregnancy test in his face.
“God was telling me at that moment that I needed to trust him,” Holsinger said.
He relied on his faith, and eight months later a child arrived, Taylor, who is now a spirited and healthy teenage girl. Holsinger didn’t tell his wife of the doctor’s warning until after their daughter was born.
“I made a decision I was going to trust in God’s goodness.”
Today, Holsinger wants to get a new generation of workers, including more minorities, active in the anti-abortion cause.
“The problem we have in pregnancy ministry work is too much gray hair,” he said before 500 supporters at the center’s annual banquet Oct. 2. “The next generation has to be equipped to be ready to serve.”
(c) 2008 Roanoke Times & World News. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
Comments