On the wall of the maternity home, painted in large letters, is the motto: \u201cSaving Babies, One Mom at a Time.\u201d <\/p>\n
For founders Randy and Evelyn James, the home started with one baby \u2014 their own. <\/p>\n
Paul Stefan was the last of their six children, born with a fatal condition. They had chosen not to abort the pregnancy as doctors advised. He lived just over 40 minutes, long enough to be baptized and named after their Catholic priest. <\/p>\n
In the nearly two decades since, the Jameses have channeled their son\u2019s memory and their anti-abortion beliefs into running maternity homes. \u201cWe knew that we were going to do something for women in crisis pregnancies,\u201d Evelyn James said. <\/p>\n
In August, their Paul Stefan Foundation plans to open a new floor with seven more rooms at their headquarters in a grand former hotel in Orange, Virginia. <\/p>\n
Their momentum is part of a larger trend: There has been a nationwide expansion of maternity homes in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the federal right to abortion. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a significant increase,\u201d said Valerie Harkins, director of the Maternity Housing Coalition, a nonprofit anti-abortion network of 195 maternity homes that has grown 23% since the court\u2019s ruling. <\/p>\n
There are now more than 450 maternity homes in the U.S., according to Harkins; many of them are faith-based. As abortion restrictions increase, anti-abortion advocates want to open more of these transitional housing facilities, which often have long waitlists. It\u2019s part of what they see as the next step in preventing abortions and providing long-term support for low-income pregnant women and mothers. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what supports the women in following through on their yes to carry that pregnancy to term,\u201d Harkins said. \u201cWhether that\u2019s a yes that they chose or maybe they felt like they didn\u2019t have a choice.\u201d <\/p>\n
The reasons for the surge in interest in maternity homes are complex and go beyond narrowing abortion access. Harkins said unaffordable housing, paychecks cut by inflation and higher birthrates in some states have all contributed. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt created a perfect storm,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s quite a need.\u201d <\/p>\n
The heyday of American maternity homes came during the three decades before Roe v. Wade. In what became known as the \u201cBaby Scoop Era,\u201d more than 1.5 million infants were surrendered for adoption. Many unwed pregnant women and girls were sent to live in maternity homes, where they were often coerced into relinquishing their babies. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur children were stolen,\u201d said Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh. She was 17 in 1966 when her parents sent her to a Washington, D.C., home run by Florence Crittenton, a large chain of maternity homes started by Progressive-era Episcopal reformers. <\/p>\n
Back then, maternity homes were secretive places, meant to hide pregnancies. Residents often used aliases. Some wore fake wedding rings in public. When they returned to their hometowns after birth and without a baby, they were supposed to pretend as if nothing happened. <\/p>\n
But few could forget. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a mother losing her child,\u201d said Ann Fessler, who collected oral histories from Baby Scoop Era mothers in her book, \u201cThe Girls Who Went Away.\u201d <\/p>\n
Fessler, herself an adoptee, said, \u201cThe women, especially the ones that did not feel like they had a part in the decision, live with this trauma the rest of their lives.\u201d <\/p>\n
Harkins said the Maternity Housing Coalition takes ownership of this history. It\u2019s often discussed among members and at conferences. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very dear to our hearts,\u201d Harkins said. \u201cWe are very intentional about what happened and want to ensure we don\u2019t get to that point again.\u201d <\/p>\n
The number of domestic infant adoptions has fallen sharply since the 1970s. When denied an abortion, women in one study overwhelmingly chose parenthood (91%) over adoption (9%), according to a 2016 analysis from researchers at the University of California San Francisco. <\/p>\n
As the stigma of single parenthood has waned, most residents in modern maternity homes choose to keep their children. Where maternity home residents once were largely middle-class, now poverty is a driving factor: Mothers are there to receive housing and financial support during and after their pregnancies, sometimes for years after giving birth. <\/p>\n
There are now maternity homes that specialize in keeping children out of the foster care system. Others have honed their expertise in addiction recovery. And while many will help with adoptions, some continue to prioritize them and have ties to adoption agencies \u2014 which can still result in painful outcomes. <\/p>\n
Abbi Johnson was 17 and pregnant in 2008 when her parents sent her to Liberty Godparent Home, a project of the late Jerry Falwell, the evangelical founder of the Moral Majority and Liberty University. The Lynchburg, Virginia, maternity home was connected to an adjacent adoption agency. <\/p>\n
Homeschooled and raised in a conservative Christian family, Johnson felt her unplanned pregnancy was treated as \u201cthe most cardinal sin,\u201d but she still desperately wanted to parent her son. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut everyone told me this isn\u2019t playing house. He\u2019s not a doll. He deserves a married couple who has their life together,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The home said in a statement that every resident is educated on parenting and adoption \u201cand has the freedom to choose.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the end, Johnson felt pressured into placing her son for adoption. She posts on social media under the handle \u201d voicelessbirthmother,\u201d hoping that one day her son might know how much she misses him. <\/p>\n
\u201cHalf my head resides in that maternity home,\u201d she said, \u201cplaying the memories again and again and again.\u201d <\/p>\n
Before she moved into a maternity home, Meryem Bakache considered an abortion. <\/p>\n
Newly arrived in the United States from Morocco, Bakache spoke little English and lived in a crowded apartment with family in northern Virginia while her husband attended college in West Virginia. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere can I live with this baby?\u201d she recalled thinking. \u201cWhat can I give him? I don\u2019t have nothing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Without health insurance, she looked for medical care and found an anti-abortion counseling center \u2014 often called a crisis pregnancy center \u2014 which provided her with an ultrasound. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see my baby, just like everything changed,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The center\u2019s staff encouraged her to keep the child and look for housing. Through a friend, she found Mary\u2019s Shelter, a maternity home in Fredericksburg, an hour east of the Paul Stefan home. <\/p>\n
Many maternity homes receive referrals from similar centers, which exist to divert women from getting abortions. The Maternity Housing Coalition, to which both Paul Stefan and Mary\u2019s Shelter belong, is a project of Heartbeat International, one of the largest associations of anti-abortion counseling centers in the country. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s one indication that maternity homes are now intertwined with the anti-abortion movement \u2014 and one reason critics say the coercive nature of maternity homes lives on in a different form. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in favor of housing and supportive housing for lots of people. I don\u2019t think it should be contingent on somebody\u2019s decision to give birth or not,\u201d said Andrea Swartzendruber, a reproductive health researcher at the University of Georgia who studies anti-abortion counseling centers. <\/p>\n
Holding her infant son this winter, Bakache described her relief at seeing the beauty of the quaint blue home where Mary\u2019s Shelter assigned her to live. And she was waiting for the day she could make a home elsewhere with her husband and baby. <\/p>\n
Her housemate Jasmine Heriot had also been looking for a safe place to live before the birth of her second child. A certified nursing assistant, she lost employment and housing after a life-threatening first pregnancy and premature birth. <\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was just so clean. The room was all set up. It was really a breath of fresh air,\u201d Heriot said, as her newborn slept in her arms and her toddler played beside her. <\/p>\n
In the absence of a robust social safety net, maternity homes are filling a void with needed services for women and children. While residents may use public assistance, neither Mary\u2019s Shelter nor Paul Stefan accept state or federal funds for their general operations. Other homes do take public money: There are federal grants available and at least five states have directed taxpayer dollars to maternity homes. <\/p>\n
Across the country, maternity homes are sprouting up or expanding. In Nebraska, an old college campus is becoming maternity housing. In Arizona, a home has added to one property and opened another. In Georgia, lawmakers recently made it easier to open new maternity homes with fewer state regulations. <\/p>\n
Mary\u2019s Shelter also recently expanded by opening another house. Like the Jameses, founder Kathleen Wilson was inspired by her Catholic and anti-abortion beliefs to begin the ministry, which over 18 years has grown to include more than 30 bedrooms in six houses and four apartments. <\/p>\n
They welcome women with multiple children, and despite their faith-based roots, have no religious requirements for residency. Residents sign a covenant for \u201chealthy living,\u201d though Wilson says they try never to kick anyone out. <\/p>\n
She is aware the anti-abortion movement is often derided as championing only unborn children, with little care given to families after birth. <\/p>\n
Wilson thinks maternity homes are one answer to that criticism: \u201cThey defy that lie that we only care about the baby in the womb.\u201d <\/p>\n
At Paul Stefan, churches and civic groups decorate each bedroom, some in shades of blush and blue. Murals line a sunny yellow hallway, where a painted giraffe peers from one side. <\/p>\n
Downstairs, Danielle Nicholson recounted living at Paul Stefan for almost five years, back when residents were spread across different houses. She is one of its success stories, now raising a soon-to-be sixth grader. <\/p>\n
But she had arrived as a surly 20-year-old, six months pregnant and feeling abandoned. \u201cYou don\u2019t end up in a maternity home because you have a big, huge, loving village of a family,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Evelyn and Randy James became and remain like parents to her. \u201cWomen are not numbers here. Or case files,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
She found not everyone was well-suited for the facility or parenthood, though. <\/p>\n
\u201cLiving with the not-so-fantastic moms put something in my heart,\u201d Nicholson said. \u201cLike I need to help. How do I help women not create abused and neglected children?\u201d <\/p>\n
It inspired her to become a social worker after she finished college. <\/p>\n
Her time as a case worker for vulnerable families has complicated her views of the anti-abortion movement, even though it\u2019s foundational to the maternity home that did so much for her. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart was really broken when Roe v. Wade was overturned,\u201d she said later. <\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t choose an abortion, and still wouldn\u2019t. But she doesn\u2019t judge those who do. <\/p>\n
Abortion is \u201cone of those choices that women have to face every day, for whatever reason,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s grace for those women too.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
On the wall of the maternity home, painted in large letters, is the motto: \u201cSaving Babies, One Mom at a Time.\u201d For founders Randy and Evelyn James, the home started with one baby \u2014 their own. Paul Stefan was the last of their six children, born with a fatal condition. They had chosen not to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1240,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":617,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}