According to a Friday report by the left-leaning Associated Press (AP), pro-life maternity homes have been growing and thriving since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
“There has been a nationwide expansion of maternity homes in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the federal right to abortion,” wrote AP religion reporter Tiffany Stanley.
Stanley quoted Maternity Housing Coalition (MHC) Director Valerie Harkins, who called the growth of maternity homes across the country “a significant increase.”
In her role, Harkins oversees a “network of 195 maternity homes that has grown 23% since” the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, Stanley reported.
MHC is part of Heartbeat International, the largest network of pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) in the world.
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“There are now more than 450 maternity homes in the U.S., according to Harkins; many of them are faith-based,” wrote Stanley:
As abortion restrictions increase, anti-abortion advocates want to open more of these transitional housing facilities, which often have long waitlists. It’s part of what they see as the next step in preventing abortions and providing long-term support for low-income pregnant women and mothers.
Stanley devoted a large segment of her article to what she called the “painful legacy” of maternity homes.
In another AP article, also published on Friday, Stanley similarly referred to the “checkered” legacy of maternity homes.
“Maternity homes also have a fraught history of trauma, secrecy and shame,” Stanley claimed in the second piece:
In the three decades before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide, many unwed pregnant women and girls were sent to maternity homes, where they were often coerced into surrendering their babies for adoption.
However, as Stanley noted, many of the maternity homes she referred to date back to the Progressive Era and are unrelated to present-day maternity homes such as the ones Harkins oversees.
Harkins told the AP that maternity homes serve to support “women in following through on their yes to carry that pregnancy to term,” whether “that’s a yes that they chose or maybe they felt like they didn’t have a choice.”
Pro-life advocates often cite the success of maternity homes to push back on the pro-abortion narrative that the pro-life movement is only “pro-birth” and does not care about mothers after they give birth.
In her initial report, Stanley recounted the case of Meryem Bakache, who with her newborn son moved into Mary’s Center, a Fredericksburg, Virginia, maternity home that is part of Harkins’ MHC network. Backache had previously considered abortion.
“Newly arrived in the United States from Morocco,” Stanley wrote,
Bakache spoke little English and lived in a crowded apartment with family in northern Virginia while her husband attended college in West Virginia.
“Where can I live with this baby?” she recalled thinking. “What can I give him? I don’t have nothing.”
While pregnant, Bakache came across a pro-life PRC that gave her a free ultrasound. This experience helped convince the mother to choose life.
Bakache remarked on seeing the first ultrasound image of her son: “When I see my baby, just like everything changed.”
Readers can find the AP’s full initial report here.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
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