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The Inverness ministry helps pregnant girls and women, advocates prevention of unwanted pregnancies, and offers post-abortion counseling.
By GAIL HOLLENBECK
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 24, 2001
INVERNESS -- You're a young woman and you're pregnant. What do you do?
If you're a 19-year-old named Clare, you decide to have an abortion. But once the process has started and you have had your first chemical injections, you panic and change your mind. Then where do you turn? For Clare, the answer was the Life Choice Care Center in Inverness and ultimately, through that ministry, God.
With her mother's guidance, the medical attention of Dr. Steven Roth of Genesis Women's Center, and the counseling available at the Life Choice Care Center, Clare kept her baby, a girl who will be born this spring.
"We're just really pleased how the Lord has intervened and shown his great grace through this particular situation," said Mary Lou Hendry, executive director of the center. "Clare has a very positive attitude now and has made a 180-degree turn. . . . She's finished one Bible study, "My Baby and Me,' and is in the process of doing another one."
The Life Choice Care Center opened its doors in April of last year. Not a medical facility, the center is a ministry that offers support to women who have or suspect they may have a crisis pregnancy. It provides free pregnancy tests, referrals, counseling, education, sonograms and maternity and baby clothes.
The mission statement for the center reads: "Life Choice Care Center is a Christ centered ministry committed to upholding the sanctity of human life to women facing crisis pregnancies by proclaiming the personal witness of Jesus Christ, giving physical and emotional support and encouraging moral purity."
Women who call or visit the center receive whatever level of support they choose, whether it is simply a pregnancy test, a complete program to help them through their pregnancy, or help to avoid the possibility of another one.
"There is no pressure as far as beating them over the head with a Bible or something," said Hendry. "Our prayer is if they are led to the center that they will feel the comfort and know that there is something here beyond themselves, and that is the power of God.
"We want them to know there's hope. It's a place of refuge, a place of confidence, where they can hopefully find an answer to their troubled hearts."
Part of the program allows the women to accumulate "love points" for completing educational and Bible courses.
"Once they accumulate love points, they can go shopping in our baby room, which is supplied with new items that have been donated by area churches. We have everything from baby clothes to lotions to diapers to receiving blankets," Hendry said.
The center also has cribs, car seats, bassinets and swings, as well as maternity clothes.
Recently implemented programs help the women find jobs and families who will temporarily "adopt" a pregnant woman until she delivers her child. Future plans include an unwed mother's home and an adoption agency.
Avoiding a crisis pregnancy is also an emphasis of the center. Trained volunteers advocate abstinence, have a support group and offer one-on-one mentoring.
Weekly support group meetings as well as one-on-one support for both women and men is also offered to those recovering from the effects of an abortion.
The center is run completely by donations. Two projects during the year raise support for the ministry: the Walk for Life in March and a banquet in October. Everything in the immaculately kept center, from the furniture to the baby items, has been donated.
Life Choice has about 40 trained volunteers.
Anja Sutcliffe, 36, came to the center last year to volunteer and found that she could benefit from the center's post-abortion counseling. Having had an abortion at 19, Sutcliffe said that only the love and forgiveness of Jesus healed her of the pain that resulted from that decision. The center helped her put her story into words. Here are excerpts from her written testimony:
"I remember the time when I was wandering alone through the darkness, through the night, through hell on earth. My soul was crushed, my heart was bleeding from countless wounds. Was there still a heart beating in my breast? I really did not know. Yes, my heart was beating, it did not stop, it kept me alive, somehow.
"My soul died a long time ago, the day I lost my daughter, the day I was in this hospital, the day I started dying. Slowly, but my heart, it did not stop beating . . . You are a murderer, you killed your child, nobody will ever forgive you and you cannot forgive yourself. The voice in my head was tormenting me. I killed my child, there is no forgiveness for me.
"And I saw it, this unconditional love in his (Jesus') eyes. I never saw such love before. He stretched out his arms toward me, showing me his nail-pierced hands, showing God's love for me. I heard his voice, I heard it loud and clear, he was speaking to me. I will never forget as Jesus spoke these words to me. "My dear child, this is the reason I went to the cross. I died at the cross so that I can forgive your sins. You can't forgive yourself, but I can forgive your sins and you will be free. Come with me.'
"Without Jesus, there is no forgiveness. Without Jesus, there is no open door to the Father's house. Jesus was knocking at the door to my heart for so long, and at this night I finally understood. I opened the door and walked through Jesus in the arms of my Father, and this was the night that really changed my life."
Helping women know they can be "forgiven and set free," Hendry said, is what the ministry of the Life Choice Care Center is all about.
-- More than 12,000 teenagers contract a sexually transmitted disease each day. Is abstinence the answer? Next week local teens who are taking the Passion for Purity course at the Life Choice Care Center share their stories.
Life Choice Care Center will sponsor "Walk for Life" March 3 at Wallace Brook Park in Inverness. Registration begins at 8 a.m., with the walk from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Call 341-5176 for information on participating in this fundraiser.
The center will make good use of the baby crib, bassinet, baby swing, or playpen that you no longer need. Call Betsy or Jim Balsdon at 344-0450 for pickup.