Very nice article in ALL's online daily magazine/email. Extensive excerpt below the link - but the whole article is worth a read.
American Life League takes a bite out of the Big Apple in pro-life tour
During our recent visit, we spoke with Sister John Mary and Sister Magdalene at the Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life. There we learned about the needed outreach to the college-age women who are being constantly bombarded with the contraceptive message from Planned Parenthood and like-minded organizations on college campuses. Sister John Mary said, “The young women have come to know what we can do for them in case they get in a situation of an unplanned pregnancy. While we certainly do what we can to educate people about preventing these unplanned pregnancies through abstinence and chastity education, we also let them know that if they are indeed pregnant, that that is a blessing, and then we counsel women to choose life-affirming options.”
During our visit we also met with Chris Slattery, president of Expectant Mother Care, an American Life League Associate group. EMC provides free counseling, pregnancy medical services—including pregnancy testing and ultrasounds—and prenatal care at 15 locations across the city, and also has a mobile clinic that is present at a few of the area’s abortion facilities during the week. It’s great to see people like Chris Slattery and the folks we visited at Houston Coalition for Life in April taking that awesome extra step toward providing these mobile crisis pregnancy centers steps away from the abortion mills.
(As a side note, EMC is currently offering internships which provide a great opportunity for young people to become the frontline pro-life warriors of today and tomorrow. The internships pay a stipend and provide housing at the Life House in NYC. Another Life House is being developed in the Los Angeles area and Chris would like to see more Life Houses popping up all over America. Learn more about the Bronx Life House at: www.bronxlifehouse.blogspot.com.)
Our visit to New York also presented the opportunity to meet with the very charming but tough Lorraine Gariboldi, who has been in the life-saving business for 26 years. She shared with us her awesome experience in running the Life Center of Long Island and its three pregnancy centers, which serve an average of 300 women per month. At one time, the organization was able to present, in both public and private schools, the most successful abstinence education programs in the area. That is, until the current administration cut off all funding. We also met with some of Lorraine’s staff who gave us a tour of the crisis pregnancy centers and shared stories about the women, babies, and some men that they have, thankfully, helped to choose life.
As we wound down our visit to this part of the country, we also met briefly with the good folks at Good Counsel Homes in Hoboken, New Jersey, and American Life League Associate group Movement for a Better America (MBA). Dennis Howard, director of MBA, hosted a terrific luncheon meeting where we had the chance to connect with Pastor Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.org, and discuss the challenges of effectively engaging minority communities in the pro-life movement, given that the abortion industry disproportionately targets these same communities.
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