Nonviolent Choice Directory: Help With Crisis Pregnancy & Beyond: Crisis Pregnancy Support

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HELP WITH CRISIS PREGNANCY & BEYOND: CRISIS PREGNANCY SUPPORT

Do you think you might be pregnant, or do you know you are? Wondering where to go from here? Whatever may be happening in your life right now, please take heart. There are people who are glad to listen and offer helping hands to you and your child, and others in your life. The resources below may help you to find such people. These resources, plus many others throughout the Nonviolent Choice Directory, are here to help get you and your baby (or babies) through the pregnancy and beyond, whether you ultimately choose parenting, adoption, or another care arrangement, such as guardianship.

Or maybe you are someone who wants to offer a listening ear or a helping hand, but you wonder how and where to best give your gifts. Maybe you want to find a pregnancy center already in your area. Or maybe you live in a place where the great need for help is going unmet, and you want to learn about how to start and sustain a center.

Whatever brings you to this page, here are some possibilities. As well as agencies that offer helpful services for pregnant women, we have several websites that reasonably and accurately present the facts of human development before birth. For many women, this knowledge is very important to their pregnancy decisions. If you are considering abortion, you may want to visit our Post Abortion Care page to learn more about its possible aftereffects.

Note: The pregnancy centers below focus mostly on aid for women who are already facing crisis pregnancies. They vary in their beliefs and activities regarding prevention and sex education. Please consult our pages on Male Responsibility, Pregnancy Prevention (All Ways) and Sexual/Reproductive Health (Complete) for more on before-conception alternatives.

[International] [Ireland] [Kenya] [Malta] [Netherlands] [United States]

Note: If you cannot find what you need in one part of this page, please look in another.

International

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Association of Jewish Family and Children's Agencies: Adoption Information Directory. If you are a birth mother in Canada or the United States and you want a Jewish adoptive family for your child, this website can direct you to the nearest Jewish family services agency. Also helpful for Jewish families seeking children to adopt.

Authentic Happiness. (English, Chinese, Spanish; suitable for people of all religions and none.) From the Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania. Positive psychology emphasizes "positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions." Research in this field "has demonstrated that it is possible to be happier, to feel more satisfied, to be more engaged with life, find more meaning, have higher hopes, and probably even laugh and smile more, regardless of one's circumstances. Positive psychology interventions can also lastingly decrease depression symptoms." This site offers free questionnaires that you can take to help you recognize, honor, and build on your strengths. Although it does not deal specifically with crisis pregnancy, this website can help you survive and thrive throughout the pregnancy and beyond it. Positive psychology can help you to get in touch with strengths you have lost sight of or have never quite seen in yourself before. And that can only make life better for you and your baby, whether or not you ultimately choose to raise your child yourself.

Benotafraid.net. Describes itself as "an online outreach to parents who have received a poor or difficult prenatal diagnosis. The family stories, articles, and links within this site are presented as a resource for those who may have been asked to choose between terminating a pregnancy or continuing on despite the diagnosis. The benotafraid.net families faced the same decision and chose not to terminate. By sharing our experiences, we hope to offer encouragement to those who may be afraid to continue on." Note: If your child has a diagnosis or Down syndrome, you may also wish to read Light at the End of the Tunnel. This booklet from the National Down Syndrome Congress (US) offers you practical information and encouragement from parents who chose life for their babies with Down syndrome.

Birthright International. (English, French, Spanish). Nonprofit founded in 1968 by Louise Summerhill, a Canadian homemaker and mother with a dream, a few dollars, and one counseling room. Now has over 500 offices and chapters in Canada, the US, Colombia, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. You can find the nearest one on the website. Birthright offers "friendship and emotional support, free pregnancy testing, maternity and baby clothes, [and]...information and referrals to help clients meet legal, medical, financial, and housing needs. Birthright treats each woman as an individual who deserves kindness and respect, as well as personal attention to her unique situation. All Birthright services are free, absolutely confidential, and available to any woman regardless of age, race, creed, economic or marital status." Toll-free number (US & Canada): 1-800-550-4900.

College Outreach Program, Feminists for Life of America. Every year 10% of all female college students in the US become pregnant. But many college students have never seen a visibly pregnant classmate. That's because most pregnant college students, whether in the US or elsewhere, fear they have no choice but abortion or dropping out. Find out more about the problem and how you can be part of the solution. For example, you can Evaluate Your Campus as a first step to making it the most hospitable place for parents and children (born and unborn) that it can be. If you need other resources on going through a pregnancy and/or parenting while you are in school, please also check out our Education resources and any other Nonviolent Choice Directory pages you may need.

Fetal Development. For pictures and words about life before birth, please visit Embryology, from the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Australia; Fetal Development, from the Westside Pregnancy Resource Center, Santa Monica, California, USA; and the Fetal Development links (English, Spanish) from New York Online Access to Health.

Having Your Baby When Others Say No! Free online self-help book by Madeline Pecora Nugent, an experienced pregnancy counselor, originally published in print by Avery Publishing Group in 1991. Now hosted on the website of a lay Franciscan Catholic group, and written from an obvious though not heavy-handed Christian perspective, but still may be useful to people of all faiths and none. The book contains much practical, down-to-earth, positive-minded advice on coping with your first reactions to the pregnancy; developing specific skills to get through it and make plans for parenting, adoption, or guardianship; dealing with others, including family, friends, professionals, and coworkers; healing from sexual trauma; and responding to health concerns and other serious situations, including pregnancy while in prison.

Pecora Nugent weaves in many tales of women in a wide variety of situations who have struggled with serious pressures to abort and gotten through their difficulties with their babies, sometimes choosing parenting, sometimes adoption or another care arrangement. Some of the information in the book has not been updated--for example, contact information of organizations mentioned in the book, and the portrayal of HIV/AIDS as a death sentence (the book was probably completed before antiretroviral drugs became available, at least in the materially wealthier countries). So take what you can use and leave the rest. And if the book moves you to seek out other resources, such as crisis pregnancy support organizations (what Pecora Nugent calls "pregnancy AIDgencies"), please look on here on our Crisis Pregnancy Support page or other pages of the Nonviolent Choice Directory to find what you need. If you still cannot find it, please email us at editor(at)nonviolentchoice.info

The Nurturing Network. US-based, international nonprofit present in over 30 countries. Founded in the late 1980s by businesswoman and mother Mary Cunningham Agee in memory of a child she lost to miscarriage, and after she surveyed women who had had abortions. 90% of the women told her that if they had known of another alternative, they would have wanted it instead. The Nurturing Network will assist any pregnant woman who asks, with such services as counseling, medical care, housing, employment, pregnancy-friendly school and workplace arrangements, and help carrying out her choice of parenting or her choice of adoption. TNN's specialty and expertise are with helping women who fear for their educational and career goals, such as college/university, graduate, and professional students, and women just starting out in their professional lives. Schools and workplaces can be such unfriendly places for pregnant and parenting human beings, but they don't have to be. Colleges/universities, families who open their homes, and thousands of other volunteers play an important role in TNN's work. Client helpline: 1-800-TNN-4MOM.

Pregnancy Resources. Publications from Feminists for Life, all now freely accessible (although the website may still say "registration required.") For example (in Adobe Acrobat, .pdf format) there is a collection of encouraging personal stories and practical information titled Unplanned Pregnancy: A Detour, Not a Dead End.

SikhWomen.com: Anti-Violence: Son Preference & Female Infanticide and Life Cycle: Life Begins at Conception. Are you a Sikh woman who is pregnant with a girl child and facing a sex selective abortion? These pages offer spiritual support and affirmation for giving both you and your daughter the choice of life, against all the unjust pressures telling you that women and girl children are not worth it.

StandUpGirl.com. (English; can machine-translate onsite into Chinese, French, German, Korean, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish.) Very popular website with information and support for young pregnant women. Started by a young woman who became unexpectedly pregnant in her teens. Includes her pregnancy story and others' stories.

Worldwide Directory of Pregnancy Help. Over 5000 Christian-affiliated centers worldwide. From Heartbeat International.

By Country

Ireland:

Life Pregnancy Care Services. (English; some Polish.) Network of six care centers throughout Ireland. "Live Internet chat with one of our counsellors is available during office hours Mon-Fri 10am - 5pm." Also offers "LIFE Helpline, local call rate, 1850 281 281...available Mon-Sat 9am - 9pm, Sun 3pm-9pm" (Irish time).

Kenya:

Exodus Kutoka Network: Pro-Life Ministry. Active support for the short- and long-term needs of single and abandoned pregnant mothers in the Nairobi informal settlement area (aka "slum") of Kibera. Run by a Roman Catholic parish network in Nairobi's poorest areas..

Malta:

Benniena. (English, Maltese.) Free, specialized services for women in crisis pregnancies from Appoġġ, the social services branch of Malta's national government. "In case of emergency you can call Appoġġ Supportline 179. This service operates 24/7 and all calls are free of charge."

Netherlands:

VBOK (Dutch, some English). Charity founded in the Netherlands in 1971, with counseling offices throughout the country and a shelter located in Gouda. Although generous family benefits, accessible family planning, and sex education programs keep the Dutch abortion rate a fraction of that in the US, VBOK is a safety net for women, men, and children of any ethnic background, income level, or immigration status. Along with presenting educational programs in schools, VBOK assists "women and their partners who are going through the crisis of an unwanted pregnancy; parents who have heard that their child is disabled; women who are suffering from post-abortion trauma or sadness after a miscarriage. Whatever views and orientation, whatever the position on the termination of pregnancy, whatever nationality, everyone can ring the national help-line on +31 900 202 10 88 or send an email to hulpverlening@vbok.nl".

United States:

Catholic Charities USA. "Serving people of all faiths, Catholic Charities across the nation provide a wide array of assistance to those in need: housing, emergency services, health care, child care, adoption, and other critical services." It has a long record of professional service to women, children, and families dealing with crisis pregnancy. Although faith-based, Catholic Charities does not prostelytize. It also serves as a voice in Washington, DC for social justice and peace.