A pro-life organization that promotes mobile crisis pregnancy centers released a video Wednesday showcasing women who either regretted their abortion or chose life after seeing a heartbeat.
The 12-minute video by Save the Storks was released, in part, as a response to TV host John Oliver’s attack on crisis pregnancy centers but also as a celebration of life ahead of Mother’s Day weekend.
Save the Storks has funded 42 crisis pregnancy center buses and says 4,000 women – as a result of the buses -- chose to keep their babies. The luxury buses offer expectant women free sonograms and long-term help. Four out of five women who visit the buses opt to keep the baby, Save the Storks says.
"Had information and resources like this been available to me when I was a young mother in crisis, I would have made vastly different choices,” said Victoria Robinson, director of external relations at Save the Storks. In the video, she describes her regret over an abortion performed in the 1980s.
“Every would-be mother has a fundamental right to understand all of her options during pregnancy, and we can't wait to see how expanding on the success of Storks will transform countless lives ... forever,” she said in a press release.
John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, which is on HBO, aired a segment in April in which he said crisis pregnancy centers “deceptively steer women away from abortion.”
The Save the Storks video tells the story of Ashley Goddard, who became pregnant with her boyfriend and drove to an abortion clinic to terminate the pregnancy. She began having second thoughts when the technician said she was further along than they initially thought.
“I said, ‘Is there a heartbeat?’ [The technician] was hesitant and she didn’t want to show me. Abortion clinics don’t normally let you see the ultrasound,” Goddard said. “… She just turned the screen around, and there was a little baby and a heartbeat. It was so small. It had its head and its arms and everything.”
Goddard chose to keep her baby.
The video was produced by the Harmon Brothers, a Provo, Utah-based ad agency.
Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.
Photo courtesy: Facebook/Save the Storks
Publication date: May 10, 2018
