A View from the Sidewalks

A group of sidewalk counselors that peacefully witness for life outside of abortion mills update this blog periodically to give like-minded believers specific prayer needs and encouraging stories of God's goodness.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Pray for Abby Women's Center

It is my pleasure to introduce you to my love, my pride and joy, ABBY WOMEN'S CENTER.



AWC is a dynamic approach to the Crisis Pregnancy Center/Pregnancy Resource Center concept. Instead of expecting abortion-minded women to come to us through advertising, we go to them, by sidewalk counseling in front of abortion mills. Our sidewalk counselors give women information, and direct women to free sonograms and other resources. Saturday is the biggest killing day of the year, yet few pregnancy centers are open on this day and even less are close to the inner city where the killing is being done. We desire to change that.

AWC also provides comprehensive care. Instead of just providing referrals and baby items, we provide mentoring. We know that an unplanned pregnancy can cause a woman to give up on her dreams. Our mentoring program seeks to thwart her disillusionment and help her make goals to achieve her dreams in light of having a child. She wants to go to college? Let's look at grants for students with dependent children and family housing options. Let's look at subsidized childcare availability. We want her to know that pregnancy is the beginning of a new life, not the end of her own.

Our social work services program seeks to determine the client's needs and ways to meet them. Does she need a sonogram to confirm a pregnancy and the Medicaid form so that she can receive pre-natal care? Does she need assistance finding housing or leaving an abusive relationship? That's where we come in.

Our abortion after care approach is different from other pregnancy centers. Most women only seek abortion healing 7-10 years and several abortions later. We stand at the exit of abortion mills with special Bibles and gospel tracts, along with a message that God still loves them and that they can be healed and never endure another abortion. Our contact information is also available and we refer to post-abortion recovery classes. God loves these women, and we need to minister to them in the brief window we are given.

We know that we may only have one chance with a woman heading into an abortion mill, but we have daily opportunities to minister to the clinic workers. Our outreach to clinic workers is a vital aspect of our ministry. So far, in just a few short months of witnessing, we have been able to help one young lady leave the industry. So many famous conversions happened because of the steady love given by Christians to clinic workers. For a great example of this, pick up a copy of Won By Love, the story of Norma McCorvey (Roe of Roe v. Wade) about how she left the industry and found salvation through Christ. In fact, one by one, the workers at Miss Norma's clinic left the industry to find Christ. The abortionist, however, is still aborting in Dallas at the very clinic where we witness.

Now you know what Abby Women's Center does. But did you know that WE DO ALL THIS WITHOUT A BUILDING?! So far, our sonographer works out of another center, our social worker and mentors schedule with the individual women to meet at restaurants and in homes, and our sidewalk counselors are stationed all over the city of Dallas. We know that it's God's will for us to have a permanent presence next to Aaron's Women's Health Center, the only late-term abortion mill in North Texas, but we need more funding to make this happen.

One local pastor has offered to let us make a presentation at his church and take an offering. Please pray that this will be fruitful. If you would like to support the work of Abby Women's Center, please contact us. Our email is abbywomenscenter@gmail.com.

Thank you all for your prayers and support!

Jacqueline for the AWC Team
Dallas, Texas

11 Comments:

  • At 8:18 PM, Blogger AbortionHurts said…

    Jacqueline, I am a sidewalk counselor in Sacramento and just found your blog. I would greatly appreciate connecting with you and learning from your experience. I couldn't figure out how to email you, but you can contact me at esills@earthlink.net. Wynette Sills

     
  • At 12:23 PM, Blogger Jay McHue said…

    I just found your blog via your comment on the Charlotte Wyatt website. I'd never heard of sidewalk pregnancy counselling before. What an awesome idea! I will keep you and other groups like yours in my prayers. God bless!

     
  • At 12:30 PM, Blogger Fredi said…

    Thank you both so much for visiting and for your encouraging words!

    I hope to have some new posts up soon, so please visit often.

    Jason- I love Shock And Blog. Been reading that for a while.

    Wynette- I'm a big fan of yours and Katelyn as well.

    I'm honored that you both would visit and comment! Bless you both!

     
  • At 1:43 PM, Blogger Lauren said…

    Wow, I found your blog from a comment in my blog and I just realized that you're in Dallas! I would LOVE to work with your team I live in Arlington and am a stay at home mom with quite a bit of free time(my husband works nights so we're both home during the day) Anways, definatly contact me about joining your group, it seems exactly the kind of thing I would love to do.

     
  • At 1:51 PM, Blogger Fredi said…

    Hey, Lauren!

    I'm an Arlington girl, too. I did grad school at UTA and am moving back from Dallas within a month. I'd love to talk to you more about getting involved!

    Thanks for visiting!

     
  • At 3:28 PM, Blogger Shannon said…

    Is it really helpful to save a life, then condemn it to poverty?

    Is it merciful to save a child who is unwanted and will grow up abused and unloved?

    You have to look into each person's life and see what her circumstances are. Merely convincing her not to abort is not enough, and providing pre-natal care is not enough, if a woman is already in a situation of such severe poverty that she has to routinely make the choice between the rent, groceries and medicine.

    You have to ask yourself, 'if this woman doesn't abort, what kind of life is her child going to be have'?

    What you're trying to do is a good thing, but you also should understand that there are times when aborting the child is far more merciful and humane than the life it will be subjected to after it's born.

    Also, it's important to remember that there are women who have to abort to save their lives (as in the case of ectopic pregnancy), and being approached in front of the clinic by someone who is attempting to talk her into having the baby anyway makes an already painful situation agonizing.

     
  • At 3:50 PM, Blogger Fredi said…

    Shannon,

    Thanks for visiting and sharing your thoughts!

    That's where we emphatically disagree. I never think it's merciful or humane to kill a child, especially because of socio-economic status. That's bigotry against the poor. I don't think it's better to be dead than poor, and so do a lot of poor people. My mother was raised missing meals, sleeping in the back of a hay truck while heer father worked nights to keep a roof over their head. She wouldn't say she was better off dead than poor.

    The problem is not the child. The problem is poverty and aborting a child doesn't make a woman richer. If she is in a bad situation, she needs help and that's what we do. She spends $600 to abort and is, in fact, poorer. That's a lot of money to me, and I'm supposably lower-middle class.

    These scenarios of a child suffering in poverty are only valid if adoption didn't exist. Placing for adoption is free and living expenses and healthcare are covered. Rather than killing the child out of a false idea of mercy, why not place the child into a loving, financially-stable home, if a lack of money would be the source of so much anguish? That poor woman wouldn't have the financial burden of another mouth to feed, she wouldn't have to pay $600, and she'd have financial aid to help her in the meantime.

    Would we ever say it's more humane to kill a born child who's parents recently became poor? Why unborn ones? Also, what if the poor woman hits the lottery after the abortion. Does abortion then become wrong? The bottom line is that it's never okay to kill a child for the sake of killing the child. I met a father at the clinic who's wife had placenta previa so bad, that neither she nor the baby could make it, so aborting SAVED a life. Most (99%) of abortions just take a life. He was pleased to speak with me and pray for me, as he was worried for his wife's safety but wasn't allowed to be with her.

    You're right that convincing a woman to choose life but leaving her in poverty is wrong, which is why we provide so many other services.

    I urge you to rethink of abortion as humane and merciful. I also encourage you to look at some medical textbooks and see fetal development photos and abortion techniques. You'll see that it's in fact the opposite of humane and merciful.

     
  • At 5:03 PM, Blogger Shannon said…

    I have plenty of knowledge about fetal development, as I am a mother myself, so I am aware of the different and very beautiful stages of a child's growth. But I also see starvation as cruel, and a life that no child deserves, and while aborting will not make a woman richer, it will take away the financial obligations of raising a child she doesn't want. I too have had relatives who grew up in poverty. At one time my father and hid brothers were living in a car when his mother abandoned their family after their father died, and my own mother spent time living with different relatives when she was a little girl because my grandmother couldn't afford to feed her.

    $600 dollars paid once is far easier to manage than the daily financial strain of raising a child. I'm not a bigot and I don't hate minorites, mommies (I am one) or even babies (I have three), but to bring a child into a situation in which it's likely to starve seems unbearably cruel, and I say that based upon the sadness that the thought of my own children (or any child) starving creates in me. I don't say these things out of a cruel or hateful nature - the opposite in fact. I love babies and children and can't stand to see them suffer.

    My supporting abortion has nothing to do with bigotry or not caring about babies and everything to do with quality of life. I believe every child should have access to health care, healthy food and be loved and nurtured, and if those things can't be provided, the parent has no business having a baby in the first place.

    I commend you for the work you're doing, and for realizing and aknowledging that sometimes a woman's life can be saved by aborting. Most christians refuse to do that, but it's an important thing to remember that while it isn't always necessary to abort to save a life, if we outlaw all abortions (as one state recently did), it closes the door for women who really need it to save themselves to have one.

    You seem to be a very open-minded and non-judgemental type of person and it's nice talking with you, even though we don't agree about this. :o)

    You also seem to be making a sincere effort to do something instead of just tossing religion at the problem and going on your way, and I commend you for that too.

    BTW, have you seen the book 'A child is born'? The photography is beautiful. Here's the link:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038533754X/sr=8-2/qid=1142636334/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-3574035-6288161?%5Fencoding=UTF8

    I have it in my own collection and I love it.

     
  • At 12:57 PM, Blogger Fredi said…

    Shannon,

    Wow! The cover is spectacular! I just requested it from my library and I'm looking forward to reading it. Thanks for the suggestion!

    We agree that starvation is cruel, and I don't think you hate mommies or babies at all. I just think that death is not a preferable solution to starvation, life and nutrition are. That's a sadistic choice to say that it's either dismemberment in the womb or starvation. In fact, it's more like a cop-out. I think we don't allocate enough resources to social problems because women can just abort--and that's what forces women to abort, rather than raise a child in poverty.

    No child in America has to be adorted or starve to death. 10 million couples wait to adopt infants. So these women aren't choosing between starving a child to death or aborting her. They can place for adoption. I'm sure you would place your kids for adoption before you'd let them starve or before you'd kill them. Why is this not a good solution?

    Now, I'm not suggesting adoption for all poor people. Quite the opposite- I suggest HELP for all poor people, which is what we do. If a woman on the sidewalk said, "I can afford to eat, but I couldn't feed a child." I wouldn't immediately suggest adoption, but ways to help her keep and feed her child. I certainly would suggest adoption over abortion, though.

    A woman seriously can't think she's aborting for the sake of her child when there's an average 10 year wait to adopt an infant. Regardless of finances and the home environment, there are options for that child that are not poverty or death.

    I don't see any problems for the child that abortion would solve that adoption can't solve without killing the child, which is why I'm comfortable in my 100% anti-abortion stance.

    Thanks again, Shannon for your suggestion. I can't wait to read this book!

     
  • At 3:47 PM, Blogger Shannon said…

    Well now that you've put it that way...

    Seriously, I knew there were couples waiting to adopt, but I had no idea there were THAT many. That makes me feel a lot more hopeful about the situation. Abortion is a painful choice. If more women and young girls were aware of their other options (particularly how many families are waiting to adopt a baby), that would have top have an effect on the number of babies born.

    That information really puts things in perspective.

    Lots to think about. Thanks for that. :o)

    Also, I'd love to see what your thoughts are on the book. Wait until you see the fetal photography - it will blow you away!! Every stage from fertilization to birth is clearly pictured and explained. It's absolutely inspiring.

     
  • At 4:01 PM, Blogger Fredi said…

    Shannon,

    That book looks great. I can't wait till the request comes in (the Dallas library lets you request whatever you'd like and has it delivered to whatever branch you'd like- I have "rented" a movie in months! :) Embryology and fetal development facinates me. It's kind of like a window to what's otherwise hidden.

    You obviously care very much for children. You've reminded me that I should be increasingly grateful for what I have, especially since our mothers did without such basic needs. I should be especially grateful to be able to take care for children, especially when so many make a painful choice because they themselves can't.

    In regards to adoption, there are so many awful misconceptions like "you'll never see your child again." I know I could never do that, and sometimes abortion looks less painful. But I've worked in fully open adoptions where the parenting and financial responsibilities fell on the adoptive parents, but the birthparents visited regularly and gained a close relationship with the adoptive family. The children grow up with everything they need and then some, especially in the love department.

    I'm so glad you took the time to write your thoughts. And I'll be sure to let you know what I think of the book when it comes in. :)

    -Jacque

     

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