LEBANON, Ohio — Since the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, many companies and groups have been offering ways to help women seeking abortions across state lines.
Now, some church leaders are doing something to get pregnant women to stay in Ohio and have their babies.
Just North of Cincinnati, off I-75 where the big Jesus statue stands, is where Darlene Bishop-Driscoll wants pregnant women in need to stop.
She’s the pastor at Solid Rock Church in Lebanon.
She said when Roe V. Wade was overturned, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, she got to work.
“I just thought, ‘Well, it’s up to the church to make an alternative,’” said Bishop-Driscoll.
She’s turning the girls’ group home on the church’s campus, that was once used to help drug-addicted teens, into what they’re calling the ‘Home for Life’.
“Once they’re pregnant and they’re faced with a dilemma, that ‘What am I gonna do now?'” said Bishop-Driscoll. “That’s where we come in.”
She said they’re planning to take in pregnant women over 18 years old.
There’s enough space to house up to 30 pregnant women in crisis, like what she said happened to her own mother.
“My father was just adamant about her having an abortion because he didn’t wanna be left with a new baby,” said Bishop-Driscoll, “She said ‘I just broke down and said if I die, I’ll die, but I’m not gonna kill this baby’, and so that put something in me at that point.”
That’s why she said this will be a safe place for pregnant women, with medical staff and volunteers on hand to help.
Beth Ward, the program director at the home, said they won’t be the ones delivering the babies.
“We have decided, we’d use our volunteers as labor coaches to provide that nurturing in a medical agency in a hospital, that we would not take that on here, but we would certainly have them trained so they would know how to react and respond in the labor room,” said Ward.
She said after the baby is born in the hospital, new mothers can come back to the home and stay until the baby is six years old.
The moms will go through classes like parenting, adoption education and job training so they can live on their own.
Then, Pastor Bishop-Driscoll said, they’ll take on the next group of pregnant women to help.
For more information about the ‘Home for Life’, click here.
