From Rev. Joe Young, Vice President for Ministry Support

Recap of Wednesday, July 28, 2010
(Click here for a recap of Tuesday, July 27.)

Our teams of moms and babies, pregnancy help center staff, and Heartbeat leaders, energized by prayer, pushed aside their anxiety and headed off to their first appointments. The schedule was packed, each team with a meeting every half hour!

We mastered the maze of the House Office Buildings and adopted a meeting flow to keep on schedule.  Our Heartbeat leaders Joe Young and Virginia Cline made introductions and they explained who we are and why we were there.  We presented each Congressional office we visited with a packet of information that included the beautiful and stunning report on the pregnancy help movement, A Passion to Serve, A Vision for Life. Next, the pregnancy center representative described their center's work and shared a Community Impact Report detailing the valuable contribution and support they provide to the women that they serve.  Then our moms took over.  They shared their own experiences and introduced their babies.  Watch for yourself.  We concluded with a short Q-and-A and then scurried off to the next Congressional office.

The atmosphere was charged with life!  The start of each meeting had the feel of an information download, but this quickly evolved into a beautiful landscape of what grace and charity and love look like in the form of a pregnancy help center.  Then the climb began.  Our mothers spoke of the low and lonely place they once experienced and described how they came to choose life over death.  They shared how glad they are to be mothers and how proud they were to come to Congress today and explain how the pregnancy help center changed their life for good.

Those legislators who share our prolife values were of course thrilled, and we were able to notify them of the attacks against our work that are growing.  But the high points of the day were the meetings with those who identify themselves as “prochoice.”  Our mothers’ stories challenged their preconceived notions and countered what NARAL had told them.

I am not naïve enough to think that we converted members of Congress, or their staff, who consider themselves “prochoice,” into prolife champions.  But we clearly challenged many of their prejudices against pregnancy help centers.  It was not uncommon for us to be told that they had no idea that pregnancy help centers provided such a wide range of services and support to women facing unexpected pregnancies.  Several thanked us for educating them on the real work and impact of our centers.  Others appreciated our willingness to sit down with them across the ideological divide and to bring the clearest evidence possible, happy moms and babies, to counter abortion lobbyists and their piles of “research.” 

Your prayers and gifts to Babies Go to Congress made an impact today.  Thank you.  We provided truth, perspective, and education where ignorance and slander had gone unchallenged.  We defended and commended you who serve and support the pregnancy help movement.  The threat of strangling regulation remains, however. We are not finished here in DC, and I know of at least one new line of attack just over the horizon that we need to address next.  I urge you to sign up for our Action Alerts and/or Stay Updated.  Again, thank you.