Showing 'The Better Way'

Legate Bobby Williams is passionate about saving babies and helping young mothers.

Jessica Nelson with her husband and their son Mason

Pregnant and single at 19, Jessica went to an abortion clinic on the advice of her friends, but decided to seek a second opinion. She got one at a Women’s Care Center where she had an ultrasound and heard her baby’s heartbeat. “They showed me there was a life in my stomach when I thought there wasn’t.” Today, Jessica is not only raising her son, Mason, but she married his father and finished nursing school. The couple now has a second son.

Humble Beginnings

Jessica is among thousands of young women who have experienced what Women’s Care Centers call “the better way” — a time-tested model that Bobby Williams says has helped WCC serve more women and save more babies from abortion than any other pregnancy resource center network in the nation.

Williams, a charter member of Legatus’ South Bend-Elkhart Chapter and director of the WCC Foundation, coined “the better way” to describe the centers’ professional, effective, results-driven and Catholic approach.

WCC’s outreach to pregnant women began in 1984 with the help of Dr. Janet Smith, then a young professor at the University of Notre Dame. Smith, who ran a student pro-life group and counseled women outside a local abortion clinic, thought it would be good to have a pregnancy help center next to the clinic. She and others identified a little blue house and, when it became available, managed to raise $50,000 — exactly what was needed.

Since then, Women’s Care Centers have grown into a network of 25 locations in eight states, serving nearly 400 women a day. WCC provides pregnancy tests and ultrasound imaging, in addition to counseling, parenting and child development classes, and Crib Clubs where clients can get baby supplies using coupons earned for attending the classes. Each center also has full-time hours, prominent signage, a homey ambiance and an accessible location.

Bobby Williams

Williams got involved with WCC after traveling to Medjugorje, the site of reported Marian apparitions. He was hoping for a miracle or sign that would indicate what he should do with the rest of his life. “My miracle was that Our Lady brought me to see that there was something else — a calling to save unborn babies.”

Upon his return, Williams sold his construction business, knowing only that he would do something for the pro-life movement. At the urging of his wife Betsy, he met with Ann Manion, Women’s Care Center volunteer president.

“She asked me to help raise money to sustain, grow and endow the ministry,” Williams recalled. “In late 2003, with no experience, we started the Women’s Care Center Foundation.”

Counseling model

Although he calls himself “just a professional beggar,” Williams is also a passionate advocate who has used sales skills, honed in the for-profit world, to advance the pro-life mission and ensure the future of Women’s Care Centers, which now have a $7.5 million annual budget.

“Bobby came at the perfect time,” said Manion, WCC’s volunteer president since 1989. Not only has Williams raised enough money to increase the number of care centers, she added, he helped develop the idea of donors as partners.

An accountant who has been on the Women’s Care Center board from the beginning, Manion helped WCC grow from a single center with 300 clients its first year into a network that will help an estimated 25,000 women in 2016. Further, more than 90% of women who visited a Women’s Care Center in 2015 chose life for their babies.

Over the years, the centers’ services have changed to include ultrasound imaging and parenting classes, but one constant has been the counseling model, Manion said. “It’s lifesaving and utterly loving.”

Bobby Williams and Ann Manion

Counselors meet clients where they are, listening and trying to understand them before offering support, and no effort is made to overtly evangelize clients. Instead, Williams said, “We strive to be Christ’s heart and hands and feet.”

Smith said the centers work because of their services, location and visibility, but especially because of the love the staff shows clients.

“The love is huge.” Clients, she said, often are uncertain about their capacity to be good mothers. “The Women’s Care Center says, ‘Whatever your needs are, we’re going to help you meet those needs.’ There’s no condemnation.”

Indeed, Jessica said she was shaking when she walked into a Women’s Care Center for the first time, but was immediately put at ease. “They didn’t judge,” she said. “I felt for once like I was comfortable talking to someone about it.”

Focus on the basics

In the past, some Women’s Care Centers offered prenatal care and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, but now they only provide referrals for those services.

“We found that the most life-saving services are the basics — pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and then walking along with the woman after she makes the choice for life,” Manion explained.

“We’ve learned we could never compete with Planned Parenthood by being more medical. We’ve found that a nonclinical atmosphere helps women feel truly welcomed and safe, the first steps in a choice for life. This is a marked contrast to the sterile, cold feeling of the abortion clinic. However, we do strategically locate next to abortion clinics, because we’ve found that ‘next door saves lives.’”

When Women’s Care Centers concentrate on the basics, added Manion, they are able to help more women choose life, stealing business from local abortion clinics. In Indianapolis, for example, several Planned Parenthood employees have come in for pregnancy testing. In Niles, Mich., where the Women’s Care Center was next to an abortion clinic, an employee sent her pregnant daughter to the center.

“We’ve focused on being really, really good at what we do,” Manion said, “and by keeping our services somewhat narrowly defined, it allows us to do more in our communities for the same money and also at a very high level.”

Women’s Care Centers, she said, see a reduction in abortions wherever they’re located. In Duluth, Minn., Peoria, Ill., Hammond, Ind., and Madison, Wis., where centers have been open for three years, there has been an average 29% decline in abortions. Greater decreases are seen at centers that have been open the longest with some exceeding 50%. In other places, abortion clinics have closed.

As Women’s Care Centers have retained their basic services, they have adapted to the times by using the Internet to attract women in crisis pregnancies. At the newest centers, more than 75% of clients find WCC online.

Although women can face seemingly insurmountable challenges in a decaying culture that devalues human life, Manion is hopeful. “In some ways I think young people today seem to be a little bit more open to life and there is some encouragement in that regard.”

For instance, Williams said, the Women’s Care Center in Baltimore recently saw a client whose mother was pressuring her to have an abortion.

“Through many counseling visits and the incredible love and concern our counselors lay out every day, this young lady bravely chose life. When her mother saw the ultrasound image, she told a counselor, ‘Thank you for loving and caring for my daughter when I didn’t.’

“Regardless of the circumstances, we just love with all our hearts and souls, and nine out of 10 choose life. That really is why it’s ‘the better way.’”

JUDY ROBERTS is a Legatus magazine staff writer.

Learn more: womenscarecenterfoundation.org
womenscarecenter.org