DeAnn and Matt were looking for an abortion facility when they instead found Women’s Care Center.
They later called it an “accident” or a “fluke” that they walked into the pregnancy help center. But that accident led to the most important blessing of their lives.
At the time, their life was in flux. DeAnn had just graduated with her doctorate in pharmacy, and the couple was struggling with finances and was in between houses and jobs.
“I’ve always been pro-life, but we were totally distraught—we just didn’t know what to do,” Matt later said in an interview with Women’s Care Center. “In the moment, it felt like the worst timing ever.”
With all of the pressures building up, DeAnn and Matt found themselves looking for an abortion facility.
“We googled the address we found online and it took us right here—to the doors of Women’s Care Center,” Matt said. “Looking back, it was a miracle because it was a complete fluke that we came here instead.”
Upon entering Women’s Care Center, the couple felt a dramatic shift in their situation.
“Once we came in, our whole lives changed,” Matt said. “You took all the pressure off. We couldn’t believe there existed people we could confide in, talk to, compare situations to. We hadn’t planned on coming here at first, but right away, you made us feel like we were in the total right place.”
Meeting with the Women’s Care Center staff gave DeAnn and Matt the confidence to save their baby from the fate of an abortion.
“This baby—we have never regretted having him for a second,” Matt said. “He is such a miracle. Absolute perfection, without a doubt. Being able to mold a little life, guide his vision of how the world will be—it’s the greatest gift. I want him to grow up knowing that there’s always beauty, even when you think there’s not. Anything ugly, you can always make it beautiful.”
DeAnn and Matt have come full circle in transforming their seemingly dire situation into something beautiful. In saving their son from abortion, they also saved themselves.
“Deann has had a 180 degree change with the birth of this baby,” Matt said. “He makes her a whole different woman. She was made to be a mother—she is the most incredible, sweetest, patient, loving mom, just like I knew she’d always be, because that’s how she is with everything else in her life.”
And he adores how fiercely protective DeAnn is of their son.
“At the beginning, she wasn’t planning on having him,” Matt said. “But now, she’d take her own heart out of her body for him, she loves him so much. She is never tired of him. I look at her in awe and just think, ‘You are the most amazing mother.’”
Real Empowerment, Real Alternatives
So how did Women’s Care Center empower DeAnn and Matt to save their child?
Through parenting classes, counseling, and material support, Women’s Care Center sojourns with women through the many concerns of an unexpected pregnancy and new motherhood.
Founded in 1984 in South Bend, Indiana, Women’s Care Center is a national leader in pregnancy help. With 33 locations across the U.S., Women’s Care Center now serves more than 400 women like DeAnn every day.
As the largest pregnancy help organization in Indiana, Women’s Care Center has impressive data to back up their impact: Today, one in eight babies starts with one of their centers.
Their success in serving women and saving babies has earned them funding through Indiana’s Pregnancy and Parenting Support Program, an initiative that provides money for services that promote childbirth rather than abortion. Supported by Indiana Right to Life, the program was first signed into law by then-Governor Mike Pence in 2014.
Through this program, the Indiana State Health Department hires Real Alternatives, a privatized social services program, to serve women like DeAnn across the state.
In total, the program has served more than 76,000 Hoosier women, promoting life-affirming options (such as parenting and adoption) as real alternatives to abortion.
For DeAnn and Matt, the alternative they found through Women’s Care Center and Indiana’s Pregnancy and Parenting Support Program was very real, indeed.
“We say over and over again, ‘Thank GOODNESS we came here instead of that other clinic,’” Matt said.
Right now, Indiana Right to Life is working to ensure even more women are offered such alternatives over the next two years, urging pro-life lawmakers in the state to fund Indiana’s Pregnancy and Parenting Support Program once more. Currently, the program is funded at $2.25 million per year through federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds.
Indiana Right to Life has said the
program has saved the state millions in health care costs. In fiscal year 2019-2020, Real Alternatives reported $2.4 million in client savings for prenatal care and $11.8 million in cost savings for children having up-to-date immunizations.
And the savings in terms of lives, have been priceless.
“Finding Women’s Care Center was an accident,” Matt said. “And without that accident, our baby, our whole life wouldn’t even have happened.”
Note: This story has been adapted from an interview collected from Women’s Care Center.
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