If it were your own daughter in crisis....

... what would you choose for her?


Okay, stay with me, while I draw this comparison. Really, don't go anywhere, just give me a few minutes to show you something powerful, a real study in contrasts.

In the past couple of days online, two very different models of women's healthcare kept popping up for me, and I was so viscerally struck by the colossal differences, more so than usual.

One model of women's healthcare undermines that which is uniquely woman, and will not only happily alter/derail her feminine nature and biology (in other words, her health), but will kill her unborn child in exchange for a nice wad of cash (and then some). That model is big business, and its "providers" care very little, if at all, about the women who pay for "services." This is the model that receives a half a billion dollars in taxpayer money each year, in addition to its own revenue stream from the (often poor and desperate) women who come in, and from the human body parts it sells and/or "donates" for research.

By contrast, the other model never undermines or disdains a woman's biology, but works with her body's design and nature. This model of healthcare would never harm a mother or her child -- but wants both to survive and thrive. Not only will this model of care provide help and health to the woman for free (nothing in it for them, unlike the first model), but the staff and volunteers care about the woman or girl, personally, and continue to serve her needs (including material needs), free of charge, long after the initial crisis and/or appointment is over. This is the model that some left-wing legislators, in cahoots with the abortion industry, are trying to close down and make illegal!


I didn't know which one to present you with first, the good or the bad. So, I'm going to go with the bad, so that your anger, disgust, horror, and even nausea will be soothed by the end of the post.

And so I give you, Planned Parenthood, offering services you may not have heard of....

Did you watch it all the way through? Are you physically ill?

I can only pray that you have been sufficiently horrified by what you just witnessed (which doesn't even begin to touch upon the body count at the clinics). If what you just saw isn't evil, then what on earth is?

Keep in mind that Planned Parenthood, the shameless purveyor of death and filth, is the darling of the Democratic Party and its candidates. If you needed any proof, here's Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards in the great seat of honor next to President Bill Clinton at this year's Democratic National Convention. It doesn't get much more prestigious than this:

Getty Images

The Democratic Party loves Planned Parenthood so much that it honors and defends the organization by name in its very Platform:

We will fight Republican efforts to roll back the clock on women’s health and reproductive rights, and stand up for Planned Parenthood. 

By name!

Oh, and Ms. Richards has had unfettered, revolving-door access to the current White House as well, with approximately 40 visits since Obama took office. Planned Parenthood is flush with both power and money.


Now let's turn to the hope. Let's look at the opposite of Planned Parenthood -- those organizations which are not flush with power and money but are full of real help, love, and heart -- and let's learn how women are treated in the centers and clinics set up to be a loving and humane alternative to PP.

My good friend LeeAnne wrote the following to someone online the other day, describing the care clients receive at one of our local crisis pregnancy centers, First Way:

I am currently a manager at a pregnancy center, and while we are of course going to share with clients the physical effects of abortion, contraception, etc., we spend much more time helping women (pro-life and pro-choice) get life on track if it is not. 

We work on strengthening the family structure, choosing the right fella, and addressing the issues that need support in her life: material, social, emotional, mental, familial, sometimes spiritual if she wishes. 

We spend just as much time and often more with someone whose pregnancy test is negative, as a real re-think about her goals in life can happen just then.

We stay with a pregnant mom through the pregnancy, and for a year after baby is born, then help her transition to other organizations which continue to help.

We have male counselors help guide and encourage the fathers of the babies, strengthening the families. We offer lots of help, but encourage them to step into the role of advocating and improving their situations themselves.

We have free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, maternity clothes, and free diapers, baby clothes, and baby equipment when they come to classes on pregnancy health, parenting, and strengthening families.

We support women and men - many - who have dealt with miscarriage.

Drug rehabs bring their patients to us for support.

It just won't work to de-value the life of the mom so much that, without offering something better, we allow her to enter the ranks of the walking-wounded, the post-abortive women we talk to every day (pro-life and pro-choice) who suffer until finding a place of healing, often through groups that generously offer time to guide these women to healing.

We can't allow that to happen without doing our best to address what brought her to this place in the first place and showing her a life-affirming option.

These last 2 weeks (for some reason) I have spoken to so very many post-abortive women and heard their relentless suffering and pleas for us to tell others there is a better way. Giving her contraception will not fix the deep desires of her heart to have a healthy relationship. Helping her realize the purpose of the sexual act, the way to work with her fertility, and the goal of a strong family makes a difference. And it often works! They redeem their situations over time, and edge closer to a better life for themselves.

I just wanted to paint a landscape of what it looks like to help these moms. And we are but one organization of many, in one city; there are so many. Our clients sometimes come to us when just about to move away. So far I have never been unable to find support for a client in her new city, by starting at a pregnancy support center in the city to which she is moving.

These centers are where the beauty happens, not in the pharmacy where she gets cheap contraception or the abortion clinic that EVERY client I have spoken to explains to be a cold place, devoid of hope and help.

First Way is a great model for crisis pregnancy centers. My husband serves as a volunteer board member, and we willingly support the center financially and with material goods for the women and children and families in need, unlike our forced "support" of Planned Parenthood via our tax dollars.

Other amazing local crisis pregnancy centers in my neck of the woods are Life Choices Women's Clinic (medical clinic) in two locations plus a mobile clinic, and Aid to Women Center Pregnancy and Medical Clinic, which produced the following video with testimonials (starting at about the :40 mark) from the women helped. Note that they were treated like family, truly loved and cared for as human beings, not as a number or a means to a bottom line:

I have witnessed these stories over and over and over again. This type of care is loving, selfless, redemptive, healing, and fully human.

Mary Ann is another of my personal friends, and as the receptionist at First Way, she reports: "The girls who have come to us after Planned Parenthood repeatedly mention how nice we are, and how PP treated them badly."

Is that really a surprise?

Check the first video on this post again. Then check the edited or unedited videos from the Center For Medical Progress, which exposed barbaric, inhumane practices and the selling of human baby parts at Planned Parenthood, and which were not doctored.

Compare and contrast. In whose hands would you wish your daughter to be?

Or any human being, for that matter?

Spread the word. Support your local crisis pregnancy center. And, please, help abortion workers leave the abortion industry.

So much evil out there, but also so much good. Never stop doing the good.