By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Crisis-pregnancy centers may have a complex task helping moms in need prepare for their babies’ arrival, but there’s someone else in the picture, even if he’s over on the edge of the family portrait.
“All of these women who come in pregnant — there’s a man somewhere, and his needs likely are not being met,” a retired physician who created a men’s program at the First Way Pregnancy Center here (1stway.net) told The Wanderer in a November 10 interview.
James Asher, DO, said that Kay Allen, a previous executive director at First Way, asked him to start the men’s program a few years ago, and it’s one of a few in the nation.
“Men’s programs are quite rare” for pregnancy centers, Asher said, but provide support for the fathers just as pregnancy centers normally support the mothers.
First Way has about 4,000 clients a year, of whom about 3,000 are women.
Often either the mother or father wants to have the abortion done, but the other partner doesn’t agree, so the task is to help one person convince the other that abortion isn’t the answer, Asher said.
Sometimes, he said, the father says he’ll break up with the mother if she doesn’t abort, but even if she has the baby terminated, he still leaves her. “We warn the woman that having the abortion will not save the relationship…as she expects.”
Men are urged to take their responsibility for the situation instead of drifting along with the mother just continuing to be his girlfriend, Asher said. “We try to get him to man up. ‘If you want to marry this woman, then marry her. If you don’t, then move on’.”
Couples range around 25 to 30 years old, he said.
The First Way website says its mission is to provide “free resources which support life-affirming choices. This is accomplished through a loving and nonjudgmental approach with peer counseling, education, and practical services.”
The center sees a wide variety of male clients, Asher said, including “people who were refugees from foreign countries….We had Muslims, we’ve had Buddhists, Hindus,” with some not able to speak English, so they’ve had translators. “We’ve got a fair number of undocumented Latinos.”
First Way has eight facilitators who conduct the classes after taking about a year of training. “They tend to be old married guys who have raised a family and can speak authoritatively to a younger man,” Asher said.
The clients give positive feedback, such as “I’ve never heard this before,” or “They’ve never talked to me like that,” he said.
Separate Saturday morning classes for women and men are held, he said, with the men receiving information on topics including how to cherish their wives, how to keep a budget, Natural Family Planning, how to talk to one’s children, and discipline.
The classes last from 10 to 12 weeks, he said, with participants receiving the incentive of “Baby Bucks” that can be exchanged for items like donated infant clothing or strollers.
The pregnancy center also has to be aware of “moles” joining the program to try to cause problems, Asher said.
“Everyone that’s involved in this program must agree with Catholic moral teaching,” Asher said. “. . . That means we never refer for abortion under any circumstances, or refer for tubal ligation, contraceptives….
“The overall advice (to men) tends to be marry or move on, but be a father to your child. . . . If you’re not going to be in the house, at least be a daddy as much as you can,” he said.
Agustin Vizcarra, the current manager of the men’s program, told The Wanderer, “We meet men where they’re at,” then move forward.
Eight to 12 men typically are in the classes conducted in English, Vizcarra said, while two or three are in Spanish-language classes.
Vizcarra, born and raised in Mexico City, said many First Way clients hadn’t had a father figure in their lives, or weren’t educated in the ways of fatherhood and marriage.
After a career in engineering sales, Vizcarra said he still does some consulting. “I enjoyed developing businesses and careers. . . . I realized one of my passions is life coaching.”
Katie Wing, First Way’s current executive director, said it has been serving the community for 46 years. Her team is “faced with life and death on a daily basis,” she told The Wanderer.
Catholic author Leila Miller spoke at First Way’s annual brunch at a Scottsdale resort on November 10, telling listeners how she returned to an active practice of the Catholic faith after having made bad decisions due to “poor catechesis” as she was raised Catholic in the 1970s and 1980s.
Miller said her generation was taught so much about God’s mercy that they developed a “wink-and-nod” conscience — God is understanding of whatever a person chooses to do.
When still a minor, she went to a Planned Parenthood clinic for contraception, she said, “doing something forbidden and rebellious,” and Planned Parenthood was happy to keep the secret from her parents.
“There was no warmth or care there, I can assure you,” and she wasn’t informed of the dangers of the birth-control pill or possible abortifacient action, she said.
Planned Parenthood workers “consciously or not were facilitating the corruption of young girls,” Miller said.
Miller said she once went to an abortion clinic for a pregnancy test, which was negative, but she noticed, “It was downright funereal there,” leading her to ask herself, “What is wrong with these people?” She hadn’t been planning for an abortion, though.
She first saw photos of aborted babies when she was 10 or 11 years old as she was looking through a book in her mother’s library, Miller said. “I knew evil when I saw it,” and always was pro-life.
A few years later a mentally ill young man went into the same Massachusetts clinic she’d visited and opened fire, she said, making her realize it could have been her in the reception area. “Death begets death begets death.”
Miller said she began to live her Catholic faith again at age 27, by the time she was married and had three children.
First Way Pregnancy Center represents the restoration of right order, and it doesn’t minimize the importance of men, who “are fully a part of healthy families,” Miller told 176 brunch guests after they dined on an assortment of eggs, fruit, meat, and pancakes.
Each guest received a copy of her new book, which she authored with last year’s First Way brunch speaker, Trent Horn, titled, Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues (Catholic Answers Press).
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