COMMENTARY: The pregnancy-care-center movement is a movement of women, by women, for women.
by Jennifer Roback Morse December 10, 2024 at National Catholic Register
Over the years, I have had many encounters with the pregnancy-care-center movement. I’ve encountered them when I’ve been a speaker at pro-family and pro-life conventions. I’ve provided training for administrators and counselors of these centers. I’ve interviewed some of them for my podcast.
The totality of this experience convinces me that the pregnancy-care-center movement is an authentic “women’s movement.” I think they have more right to describe themselves as a “women’s movement” than some of the self-described “feminists.”
First: pregnancy care centers are numerically dominated by women. At most of the meetings I’ve attended, the audience of staff and volunteers is 90% women. In fact, I was recently at one meeting that was striking for its “high” percentage of men: 25%!
Some of the centers do have guys who volunteer to sit in the waiting room. The counselors at these centers have learned that many women feel pressured by their boyfriends to abort their children (a point “pro-choice” advocates seldom acknowledge). The male volunteers hang around the waiting room for the sole purpose of having that “man-to-man” talk that some of the younger guys may need to support their girlfriends in choosing life.
For all the talk about “choice,” you might think women who call themselves “feminists” would support the full range of women’s possible “choices,” including raising the child with a supportive father. For all the talk about “toxic masculinity,” you might think self-described “feminists” would applaud men encouraging other men to take their paternal responsibility seriously. But I digress.
Apart from this, the staff and volunteers of pregnancy care centers are predominantly women. And of course, the clients are predominantly women. What these women share — staff, volunteers and clients alike — is a conviction that babies are a blessing. Women create these centers to be there for other women, heart to heart, woman to woman. The pregnancy-care-center movement is a movement of women, by women, for women.
However, pregnancy care centers are under attack — both legal attack and literal, physical attack — from people who describe themselves as “feminists.” Their main complaint is that pregnancy care centers are “misleading.” A critique published in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics breathlessly states:
