By REY FLORES
Years ago when I worked as a volunteer coordinator at a domestic violence shelter, I was still young and more liberal in my views than I am now. It was a demanding job where I witnessed a lot of pain, suffering, and heartache. Thankfully I also saw women and children survive and move on to a better life in a few cases.
Some of the outreach and networking we did was with rape victim advocate organizations. We would sometimes work with the same women and families who had sadly also experienced some form of sexual assault.
The one thing that bothers me to this day is how the domestic violence and rape victim advocates and the organizations dedicated to help these women and families are staunch pro-abortion advocates.
One of my tasks was to train volunteers how to appropriately answer the emergency calls we received from women seeking shelter. Part of the intake interview, depending on whether the woman was safe at that moment or not, took place over the phone. The main interview to assess the woman’s and her children’s needs took place once they had safely arrived at the shelter.
Before I could train people to do this, I had to be trained myself, so with a woman’s permission, I would be asked to sit in on the intake to see how it was handled properly. More often than not, the women who came to us for help would be at some stage of pregnancy, and were usually accompanied by a child or multiple children of varying ages.
Once I conducted the interviews myself, I learned that sometimes the added pressure of another pregnancy in an already unstable home was the reason for increased tensions and violence. Perhaps a father did not want another child because he was out of work, or in some cases a woman had more than one man she was intimate with, therefore causing all sorts of problems in the woman’s life.
One of the very first interview questions women are asked at places like these is if she is pregnant. If the answer is in the affirmative, the domestic violence counselor will then offer to make an appointment for the woman at the nearest Planned Parenthood location. This is a fact.
The counselors and the organizations as a whole operate on a progressivist feminist ideal. While they may be helping a woman escape from a violent partner or situation, they are at the same time brainwashing her to think that her unborn baby is a burden she doesn’t need in a life already full of other burdens.
Not all, but many, of these “counselors” lead women to think that their instability and the number of children they already have create an un-ideal environment for another baby. Better to abort the baby than to give him a fighting chance in the God-given life he has every right to, in other words.
Of course, as I mentioned, at that time I was a young single man in my 20s, so I had no problem with abortion, or leaving women to make those decisions on their own. I had bought into the lie and, as I have written before in this column, by that time I had already aborted two of my own children with a girlfriend I had no business cohabitating with, let alone impregnating her — twice.
I really had no opinion either way about the kind of recommendations these counselors were giving to these women. I believed that it was none of my business.
It wasn’t until I got married and my wife and I started our own family that the gift, beauty, and sanctity of life finally became a non-negotiable truth for me. It was later on when I started doing more activism in the pro-life movement that I started to recall just how anti-life these women’s crisis programs truly were.
As I networked with some crisis pregnancy centers in my later work, I felt a certain déjà-vu about the domestic violence shelters and the similarities both had in their need for material goods like diapers, children’s clothing, toiletries, feminine hygiene products, and gift cards for groceries and even school supplies for some of the women’s older children.
The difference was that all of the good that these rape victim and domestic violence programs were doing was being undone by taking these women from the violence in their lives and leading them to abort their babies.
To this day, as far as I know, this same anti-life, anti-family environment still exists in these places of so-called refuge. Encouragement for abortion wasn’t the only problem. Instead of suggesting family counseling, or even spiritual guidance, the women were encouraged to sign orders of protection against the fathers of their babies, oftentimes sending these men to jail rather than aiding them to better themselves.
Yes, of course, the orders of protection were absolutely necessary in many cases. I saw women scarred by burns, mending broken bones, bruised and battered in both body and spirit. Yet there were cases where the women still had hope in a husband who, while sometimes violent, was a good provider who they truly believed could benefit by counseling for anger.
I also volunteered as a bilingual counselor for men who had court-mandated anger management counseling as part of their probationary requirements, so I did indeed meet some men who were truly working hard to mend their ways and save their marriages and families.
Anyway: I have had all of this on my mind for a very long time. It has been at least 18 years since I last did this kind of advocacy and work, but it has never left my thoughts.
My point for sharing all of this with you is that I want you in the pro-life movement to start thinking of ways to influence some of these agencies who serve women in crisis.
I know that the problems these women are facing intersect oftentimes, but the abortion part is definitely something we absolutely have to do everything in our power to stop. We must educate these domestic violence counselors and rape victim advocates to see mom and baby as a whole. We want them to see the sanctity of life and to let these women know that their unborn babies are blessings, not burdens.
When at all possible and if the husband or boyfriend isn’t a complete threat to the lives and safety of these women, at least let’s provide women with resources for family counseling and healing.
Another thing that I saw wrong with many of these programs is that they are very secular and frowned upon any mention of Jesus or God. I often thought how wonderful it would be to one day open up a shelter for battered women that could also provide spiritual healing through the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
Last but most important and as usual: Pray, pray, pray for life, for marriages, and for peace in our families.
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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