Influence is all around us. On television, in magazines, at the movies – the next generation is learning that it’s ok to have sex as long as it’s the "safe" kind, homosexuality is normal and abortion is ok if you’re not ready to be a parent. 

With the recent academy-award winning film "Cider House Rules" depicting abortion as a positive and sometimes necessary part of life, it leaves little to wonder that the media is a large part of where society’s sphere of influence is centered. 

One ministry that is trying to bring light to such a hard, darkened world is Birth Choice, a women’s resource center in Jackson, Tenn., where several Union students, faculty and staff members have become involved in helping save unborn children and improving the quality of life for their mothers. 

Union professors Camille Searcy and Sandy Hathcox, along with Union President David S. Dockery serve on the center’s advisory board. Searcy has a special reason why she’s so committed to Birth Choice.

“My son, who will be 17 in June, is adopted. I know how hard it must have been for his birth mother to make the choice of adoption rather than abortion,” says Searcy. With more than 3300 crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S., Chris Veteto, who manages the independently-owned center, stresses that the purpose of the center is not simply to save babies. 

“We’re here to minister to hurting young girls and when you get the girls, you get the baby,” says Veteto, who has been a part of the center first as a counselor and then as staff for more than 11 years. She does add, though, that there is an alarming decline in abortion-risk clients and that few are choosing life for their babies. 

“If they come into the clinic and read the literature, watch the video and especially take that first sonogram of their unborn child, 80 to 85% of abortion-minded mothers will change their minds,” says Veteto. However, the rate of post-abortive clients is increasing, and the statistics of post-abortive women in our churches today is staggering. 

“The Mercy Ministry at Birth Choice really helps show care and the love of Jesus for post-abortive women,” says Hathcox, an education professor at Union who serves on the center’s board of directors. “The consequence of their actions are going to be with them forever, but they need to know that there’s hope and forgiveness which is what the volunteers try to pass on.” 

With an average of 700 women coming through their doors every year, forty Birth Choice volunteers continue to provide one-on-one counseling and sharing of the Gospel with these young, hurting women. 

“A lot of girls don’t know what they’re getting into when they’re contemplating an abortion,” says Union freshman Katie Hemphill, who is a volunteer counselor at the center. 

“Counseling really keeps me on my toes – I have to know what I’m talking about because two lives are in my hands – the life of the baby and the soul of the mother.” 

Article by Sara Horn