Episode 105

On the frontlines of the abortion issue in the United States are hundreds of pregnancy resource centers, providing help, healthcare, and counseling to women in crisis pregnancy situations all over the country (and services are extended to the children’s fathers as well). Unlike Planned Parenthood that provides death services under the guise of healthcare, pregnancy resource centers actually provide prenatal care (many with free ultrasounds) in order to help people make the best decision in their situation: protecting the life of the innocent preborn child. Some of the people seeking their help do not choose that optimal outcome, but these centers lovingly provide the care anyway. They’ve also been the target of attacks, both political and physical, and many people are not clear on what services they actually provide. In this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast, we interview Becky Sheetz, CEO of Life First Pregnancy Medical Center, a pregnancy resource center in Virginia. In this interview, we learn about all that pregnancy resource centers have to offer, what their needs are, and how you can join the effort and help.

Guys, abortion is legal in our land because the church allowed it to happen.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay. And I’m MCG, and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

This is episode 105 of the Removing Barriers podcast. And in this episode, we’ll be having a discussion with Becky Sheetz, the CEO of Life First pregnancy center. Becky, it is indeed a pleasure, and welcome to the Removing Barriers podcast.

Hey, thank you. Delight to join you.

Great. So let’s get into it. Becky, tell us about yourself and how did this get all started? Maybe tell us about life first. What do you do? How do you help women in pregnancy crisis, stuff like that. Just give us the overall history of yourself and of your organization. Terrific. Well, I’m the CEO of Life First, the pregnancy medical center here. We’re based in Prince William County, and I’ve been here myself for just over five years. And I’ve had the great privilege of overseeing two pregnancy medical centers. There’s one in Woodbridge and there’s one in Manassas, and we exist. Our vision is that every woman and man who is struggling with an unplanned pregnancy would come through our doors and be transformed in Christ. So what we get to do every day, it’s really cool. We get to draw women to this ministry, women who are struggling with an unplanned property. These are the women in our community who are, quite frankly, the most likely to terminate a pregnancy. So we see women who are struggling with life and death decisions. They’re pregnant. They don’t want to be pregnant. We say they want to be unpregnant. And that’s how they come to us. They’re drawn to us through our marketing, through our outreach, through things that we’re doing, to message to them that we have free pregnancy medical care to help you make an informed decision. So what we do here is we provide free ultrasounds, free pregnancy tests. We provide parenting and prenatal classes to those women and those men, partners, husbands and boyfriends. If they choose life, they can be part of our parenting and prenatal classes. We have a plethora of resources in the community to direct her to. She may need housing, she may need prenatal care. There’s a variety of needs that she has that we may not do them ourselves outside of our ministry, but we connect her with trusted organizations locally that can help her at a reduced rate, summer free rate, just based on kind of where she is in her life. Those are some of the resources we offer. We also offer, and I always like to make this message really clear with our partner organizations, with our Christian organizations, with every organization, really, and that’s that we offer abortion recovery. So there are women throughout our community who have made a decision to terminate a pregnancy, maybe recently, maybe decades ago, and they’re still struggling with that shame and with that guilt. And these abortion recovery Bible studies are for her. They’re to help her really understand that she is forgiven and she is set free by the Lord Jesus if she’ll accept that forgiveness. So it’s a great opportunity. We do amazing things every day. Oh, and also one more thing that’s really important is that we share the gospel. So with every single woman who comes through our doors, we tell her about a Savior and what he’s done for her and that he’s there for her. He’s there for her baby. She may be surprised to be pregnant, but the Lord is not surprised. There are no unplanned pregnancies in the eyes of our Lord. Amen. There’s hope for her and there’s a future for her. So we’re really excited to have the chance to tell her about Jesus as well and invite her to that relationship.

Well, I guess that’s a wrap. My goodness. I heard of Life First, and I didn’t realize that you provided all of those particular services. Like, you blew me away when you mentioned that you helped put her in contact with other needs that you may not personally provide at my first, but that you put her in contact with people who can meet those needs. So whoever would open their mouths and say that Christians only care about the kid and they don’t care about the mother or the life the child might have afterward, that has absolutely been debunked. I mean, it’s a slam dunk. It’s done. That is certainly not the case. And I am so glad that we have you on the podcast to Lose today and explain all of these things because I’m sure I’m not the only one that didn’t know that you provided all of these additional service in addition to ultrasound and prenatal care. That is fantastic. So you mentioned that when the mother comes in, she’s pregnant, doesn’t want to be, and is really having a hard time in this sort of crisis pregnancy sort of situation. What do you do at First Life to help the women that are in that situation? How do you get them to keep a pregnancy that they don’t want, essentially? So you broke up a little bit on me. Let me restate the question. I think what I heard you say was, how do we impact her to keep a pregnancy? Is that the question? Yes. Especially when they come in not wanting to be pregnant. And this was sort of a surprise or perhaps a terrible crime situation. What do you do?

It like, first to help encourage her to choose life. Amen. So the short answer to that is we tell her the truth. We show her the truth and we tell her the truth. So if it doesn’t want to be and she believes what the culture tells us about that thing inside of her right. Maybe it’s easy to terminate a pregnancy if you don’t acknowledge that it’s a child, right? If you believe maybe the world’s narrative or you just don’t want to confront it, it makes it easier, right? So we believe that women deserve better than abortion, number one, and we don’t just believe that. We see it, right? Every day, we see what the Lord does. We don’t save anybody. We don’t save any children. We don’t save anybody for all eternity. The Lord does all that. So he draws his women in, and here we are. She’s in a counseling room with a lay counselor who specifically to deal with women who are in that moment of crisis and to help her understand what her options are. So whatever her challenges are to this pregnancy, there is a solution, right? If the challenges are financial, let’s talk about what that means. Who do you have in your life to help you? What would help you make a decision, right. Not to try to argue with her, but just to get her to consider and get her to think. We have men in this ministry as well. The guys, the male advocates, they meet with his dad, and I had a male client advocate share with me. He was meeting with the father, and the father was saying, I can’t do this financially. We can’t do it. So they just talked through. What does that mean? Well, what are your struggles? Where are you? What does the future look like? And by the end of the conversation, the dad said, you know, really, I think we can do this. He needed to understand and talk through the circumstances of the situation in that case. And we see this with the women as well. Now, some women come in, they’re very hard hearted. They’ve already made their mind up. I mean, it happens, right? We do have women who just already made their mind up and that we don’t see an impact. Now, they leave here, and perhaps they do make a decision for life. We don’t always know that. But that’s the first step. And I’m trying to answer your question. I feel like I’m being a little long winded. No, you’re answered. Go ahead. Okay, good. Thank you.

And then so that’s the meeting her where she is, listening to her. We have so many women say, I needed somebody to talk to. Sometimes these women will come to us and they’ll say, I’m pregnant. I haven’t told anybody. Nobody knows. The father of the baby doesn’t know. Parents don’t know. Sister doesn’t know. Best friend doesn’t know. She hasn’t told anybody. So we’re the first person she talks to. So what do you think the difference is if she tells a pregnancy medical center like us. Who are safe and honest and good and encouraging and supporting and loving. Versus telling somebody who wants to see her terminate that child’s life support. That she gets. The encouragement she gets the idea that. Maybe I can do this you know. The lie that such a dichotomy that we’re told that women can do anything. We can be anything except a mother. I mean, let’s think this through. You can have a life, a rich, lovely, wonderful life and raise a child. These things are true, right? So we introduce her to the truth, and we get her thinking about what the future may look like, because she’s thinking, she’s shutting down. She’s saying, my life is right, my career is over, my education is over. If I’m going to the military, I can’t go to the military pregnant, right? She’s coming in with all of the objections and all these reasons to tell us her life will not go on as she planned if she has this child. So we talk through that with her, and she stops, and she takes a breath, and she stinks. And we encourage her. Who’s your support network who is going to be here for you? We’re going to have you come in for an ultrasound now. And you know what? You can come back for another ultrasound. And you said your sister was adopted, maybe, or your sister adopted or your sister is a good person and your life somebody loves. Bring your sister in with you. Let’s let her see that baby. Or, what’s the situation with the father of the baby? Is there a relationship? Does he know you’re pregnant? You can come back for another free offer. You can bring that father because we want to have her encouraged. Here’s the difference. So the abortion clinic, as I’m told, they separate her from that support network. Anyone who’s there for her, they get out of the way. They separate her. They take her, they do the abortion. They want to lie to her and tell her there’s no hope. It’s over. The only hope is the abortion, right? And we tell her the truth. We want her to be encouraged by people around her who will love her, and we share the gospel, as I said in that counseling room, we tell her about that Lord and that Savior. And maybe I want your listeners who are Christians to really understand this. Maybe she is a Christian. And we hear this. We hear this too often. A woman will say, I’ve heard the gospel you’ve just shared. I acknowledge that. I believe that Jesus my Lord and my Savior, no doubt about it, I’m saved. But I need to have an abortion because it’s my only choice. So we challenged her on that. So, okay, it’s your choice. Legally, it’s your choice. But how does the decision to abort correlate with your faith? How do you think that’s going to impact? What do you think the Lord believes about abortion? So just challenging or I’ve had women say to me, my goodness, if I had an abortion, but if I had someone ask me those questions and challenge me, I would never have aborted my child like that’s. Powerful. So that’s why it’s important that we and again, we tell all the truth. And this is all done in love and it’s all done in compassion. And none of this is meant to disturb her. None of this is meant to force her. It’s meant to help her stop process the counting piece. And then there’s the ultrasound. But I think I could break now and see if you have any other questions before I continue to talk.

Yeah, so one question that’s on my mind, Becky, is you mentioned that you help women who have had abortion and now feeling the guilt afterwards. And if you listen to the news, and maybe especially the liberal news media, they will tell you that once a woman has an abortion, it’s quick, it’s simple, she got home, she can continue her life, but not much is mentioned about a potential guilt afterwards. Do women normally have some sort of guilt after an abortion? And two, how do you comfort them when they come to you and say, man, I’m full of guilt because I bought it, my kids, ten years ago, and I still can’t get over that? That is a great question, and I think you’re going to get into some of these questions as we go through. But just the demonic nature and the lies of any industry that’s built upon profiting from I hate to be crass, but profiting from killing children and from wounding moms, any industry that’s built upon that, who’s behind that, that’s demonic. So we talked so many women in here who have experienced abortion, who are so recovery, it takes a long time to recover emotionally from that. And I know, like you said, the abortion industry does not acknowledge it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And I know it’s true because I talked to people who’ve experienced it. We have that abortion recovery Bible study that I mentioned, and if women are in the Prince William County area and the Fairfax area and they want to take advantage of that, you can learn more about that at lifefirstva.org. It’s an ongoing Bible study. There are small groups where they help women to be set free from a past abortion decision. But the reality is, very few women, based on the number of women who have abortions, very few women come forward and really first acknowledge that you’ve got to sign up for this and acknowledge in front of others, I’ve made a decision in the past. So the shame and guilt, it’s just so entangled in what these women are walking through. We have other women who come through here. Many of the women who come in here, I shouldn’t say many, but a healthy number of women who come in here have already had abortions. And what the abortion industry knows is once they profit off of you having one abortion, they’re going to profit off of you having multiple abortions. That’s a way for them to monetize the killing of children. So that’s hard for us. She already knows what it’s like. She’s been through it. And women will say, I can’t do it again. I can never have another abortion. But sometimes they do. It’s kind of this cycle, and, you know, the baby’s not the problem, right? The baby is not the problem. The circumstances that led up to that unplanned pregnancy and what’s going on that have caused the trauma and the decision to terminate, that’s the problem. So we’re obviously not addressing that by getting rid of that child. So to answer your question, it’s not an easy solution. There’s not a quick fix for dealing with the guilt and shame of abortion. But the abortion recovery Bible studies that we offer, and other pregnancy centers, offering pregnancy centers all over the country offer these Bible studies. They’re life changing.

And I’ve had many women who have gone through these tell us how it has helped them to really say, I know that God forgives me. God forgives all sins. Sometimes they’ll say, he can’t forgive me. It depends on where they are and their understanding of Lord. But they’ll say, I can’t forgive myself. That’s what we hear a lot of times. I can’t forgive myself for what I’ve done. And I’ll tell you one other thing. I don’t know what you know, what your listeners know about something called the abortion pill. It’s not the birth control pill. It’s not the morning after pill. It’s the abortion pill that you take if you take two different medications and it essentially causes an abortion, it causes you to expel the child through medicine. Nonsurgical. I’ve heard of it. You’ve heard of it? Good. I’m glad you’ve heard of it, because we need to be aware of these things. So what happens there, I’m told the Guild, is different because she can’t blame an abortion doctor. She doesn’t blame the nurse. She doesn’t blame the receptionist at the abortion clinic. She blames herself. She took the pill. She ingested it. She suffered on the bathroom floor for as long as it took to terminate that child. I’m not trying to be graphic and disturb people. I’m trying to just give you facts. She sees that expelled child. She sees it because she completed the abortion at home, and so she carries that guilt and shame with her. And I think we’re only beginning to really understand the ramifications of that. Who do you tell? Who do you go to for forgiveness for that? You know what I mean? Just think about just the heaviness and the demonic nature around these activities and how it hurts and wounds women in ways that you’re never going to hear from the other side.

Incredible. I personally have had miscarriages, not an abortion, but miscarriages. And the pain that you go through is just incredible. It’s a process of everything. Being expelled, of course, not trying to be graphic. So for a woman to take a pill and to have to go through that and for the media and for these abortion clinics to absolutely refuse to acknowledge that or to give women the full picture instead of lying to them and talking about the shout your abortion nonsense and I had an abortion in my life is better nonsense. But what they don’t show is the guilty that women suffer. In my mind, those people that are promoting abortion, they’re the ones that hate women. They’re the ones that hate children. They’re the ones that hate life because they are simply not upfront about these things. They’re pushing something and promoting something that just is not best for the mother. And I imagine there’s a gazillion ways that you can describe how you distinguish yourself as life first from Planned Parenthood. What are some other ways in which you are different from an abortion clinic? Because if I may say one more thing, if a woman is watching TV or the news or any type of media that’s put out there, you would think that Planned Parenthood is just the saintly organization that provides prenatal care and all sorts of treatment for those that are engaged in sexual activity. And there’s nothing questionable or shady about Planned Parenthood at all. If we were to believe what CNN and many others would say, how would you say that life first is the night and day difference from Planned Parenthood? Yeah, amen. That’s a great question. I just want to just amplify something you had said, and I’m sorry to hear about your miscarriage, and I know there’s others listening, and I’m sorry. I know that is an incredible loss. And as far as the abortion history, not acknowledging the pain and the suffering from a termination decision, they also, as I’m told, as we are told, they don’t give women informed consent to let them know what will happen when you take the abortion pill. What might happen if they did. We have women again, they’re ashamed. They’re guilty. They’re not going to sue the abortion industry. They’re just like, wow, I can’t believe I did this. And they quietly suffered, and we had women tell us they suffered and they physically suffered and they had no idea. They’re told taking the abortion pill is like having a heavy period. That’s what they tell us they’re told, and that’s not what happens. That’s a lie. Wow. But why should they tell the truth? Because lying if your goal is to make money off of murdering children and I don’t mean to be crass when I say that I think we are all on board acknowledging that abortion is terminating a child. If someone’s made a decision to do that in the past, you are forgiven and set free by the blood of the Lord Jesus. Going forward, we need to acknowledge that that’s what abortion is. So if you’re making money off of terminating children and wounding women and it’s working for you and you’re lying about it. Why would you stop? Why would you stop? Why would you stop? You know, so we are the opposite of that. So their objective, as far as we can see, is to you mentioned the risky sexual behavior. The more abortion somebody has, the more sexually transmitted diseases somebody has, the more gender reassignment surgery. I’m understanding that they’re getting into that industry. I don’t know that to be true myself, but I’ve heard that the more risky sexual behavior that you’re engaging in, the more contraception you purchase, the more money they make. The more money they make. It’s a pretty profitable business model if you step back from it. We don’t make any money from what we’re doing. Everything we do is completely donor support. All the money that comes in here is given by people in our local churches. So we would love to not be very busy because it means women aren’t making abortion decisions, but we are glad we’re busy because we’re taking market share from the bad guy. That’s what. But not to make money, right? To rescue children and to build a kingdom.

So, I mean, the idea like you said, it’s all a lie. It’s all predicated upon a lie. If you know anything about Margaret Sanger, her objective was to wipe out poor people and people that she believed were not that wouldn’t be good to repopulate the world and the country we love every baby of every background from every person because we believe that they’re all children of God. So you couldn’t be any further apart than getting rid of the ones that nobody wants in their mind, right? And wanting to build that family and wanting to see every child have life. I mean, it’s just night and day. There’s really not any comparison between their work and our work. It’s life and death. That’s the contrast.

Let me have a question to that, because I’m glad you just have parenthood has also stepped into a realm of all other sex related surgeries and interventions and medications and things of that sort of gender reassignment, all of that and everything that comes along with that. And it’s recently been exposed that they also deal in the realm of I mean, I’m not trying to be sensationalist when I say this, but they also deal in the realm of literally black market sale of body parts of aborted children and tissue from aborted children. So the real picture of Planned Parenthood is so malevolent and sinister and evil. In light of all of this, why do you think they can even continue to exist in our country? What’s the hold up of shutting this company down? I mean, that’s a question for the Lord, isn’t it? We ask the Lord all the time, Jesus, how much more of this will you suffer? How much more of this will you tolerate? Because I can’t imagine we’re angry. And the Lord, my goodness, they are decimating his children. They are decimating his creation? How are they able to do it? How are they able to make money from it? And every entity that’s involved in that, every research organization, every hospital network, every college, every university, every corporation, every abortion doctor. I mean, I cannot begin. I’ve read studies. I’ve read just awful, horrid stuff, profiting from aborted children. And I got to wonder where those moms coerced to abort their children, to get this material for them to sell? I mean, how far back does it go? What’s the motive in getting these babies? What are we doing with all these babies, these aborted children that are being sold? You’re right. Where are they going? Where are they ending up? And I’m not going to give you a theory. I’m not going to give you I am not qualified to give you anything but an opinion, but it’s gone somewhere. We’re making a lot of money off of it, and I think we’ve got to be asking some questions because I think it’s impacting a lot of us in some very real and very practical ways. And I do wish and I do pray all the time that the Lord would just open our eyes to what’s going on under our noses, because I don’t know how much more of it he’s going to stand. Yeah.

Well, all right. Well, let’s go and do a little bit of break, then we’ll come back and pick up with the rest questions. you are listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We’re sitting down with Becky Sheetz, the CEO of Life first pregnancy center. We’ll be right back.

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Becky, do you think about the overturn of Roe v. Wade and even Casey versus Planned Parenthood? Yeah, well, we’re obviously excited. It’s definitely good news. When the court makes gosh, it really shouldn’t be a landmark decision. It’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal. But it’s also just disappointing that we live in a nation founded on Christian principles where we’ve had to reverse this decision. That part is disappointing. And I do understand there are factions within the life affirming work that even they just say, we shouldn’t be celebrating it. Right. The fact that we’re still conducting abortions in states across the US is unacceptable, and I would agree with that. It’s unacceptable. We still do need to celebrate our victories and we absolutely need to praise the Lord and give him honor and glory and thanks, but not be satisfied. Not to say we had this great win, let’s just relax. But we also honor those who’ve gone before us and who’ve done this work and who’ve been laboring in these trenches since 1973 and before. Whether it’s pregnancy centers, whether it’s in legislative circles, whether it’s standing outside of an abortion clinic and just trying to encourage a woman to choose life, to make a good choice, people who have been fostering, people who’ve been working with an adoption organization, so they should also be able to just acknowledge this is a real win and a real victory. So we celebrate that. We praise the Lord. The day that weighed with overturned was an awesome day for us. We were actually moving. We have a new center here in Manassas or a headquarters center where I work out of and we have other folks in the business office and we were literally moving our furniture and we had volunteers helping. It was a really fun day. When we got the news, the decision was overturned, so we celebrated. We did a quick Facebook Live. We’re excited because we need to praise the Lord when things happen. But it is my goodness, it is not enough. And you’re probably going to ask about the impact here. Women are still looking for abortions in Virginia, Maryland and DC. And that is not going to change anytime soon. Sort of a movement from God or a complete overturning in both of our House and our Senate and a whole lot of new fresh faces on both sides of the aisle. That’s not going to happen. A complete overturn. So we still have a lot of work to do.

Yeah. I always say that it seemed like Christians are more comfortable fighting these kind of things in the political realm. And I wonder what you think, because I believe that we should be fought outside of a political realm. Of course, having overturned was great and everything, but as I think as you do in your pregnancy center, you point these women and these potential fathers to Christ and if they are saved and converted and love the Lord, then they will choose life, then they will vote differently. So I’m wondering if it’s a situation where we’re attacking the fruit. Let’s create legislation that will prevent them from doing something rather than presenting to them Christ and changing their hearts and then out of that flow the right decisions. Amen. That’s a great question and I identify with that. I completely agree with that. I do think, you know, it does take we are the body of Christ, right? And we’re all differently gifted. I’m not a medical person. I’m not scanning women. I’m not going sonography. That’s not my gifting. We have a team of medical people nursing and our DMs that. Do that scanning. So they have their skills. The folks who are working inside, whether they’re members of Congress or whether they’re lobbyists, lobbying for life. I mean, the laws matter. They really do. If a woman can’t have an abortion after a certain week, then she can’t have an abortion after a certain week. So that is kind of incremental. But it does matter. And I’ll tell you, and I don’t want to hijack this and take this into a political direction. So if you need to rein me in, please do rein me in. It’s your podcast, and I want to honor that. In the state of Virginia, where we operate, we do feel like we’ve got different covering. Now. We have an attorney general, Jason, who has the back of pregnancy centers, who has publicly written a letter to Google saying, hey, there’s things that you’re doing or you’re considering doing that are hurting pregnancy centers. You can’t do that. You can’t do that, or we’re going to take action. We have a governor here in Virginia and we have a lieutenant governor here in Virginia who affirm that life is sacred. When we were vandalized, our center at Manassas was vandalized in May. The attorney general quickly spoke up. The state attorney general, I should qualify. Not a lot of activity from the federal level. But our state attorney general spoke up, and he said, I mean, this is not a radical thing to say, guys. Don’t vandalize pregnancy centers. This is not a radical statement, right. Don’t vandalize the good guys, to my point, and that is having legal covering, having members of Congress who are friendly, it helps us, it supports us. It enables us to operate with covering that you don’t have when you’re in a different jurisdiction, with different laws and things like that.

So I would say two things. I don’t want to live in a country, ideally, where abortions even legal. I don’t even want to live in a land. Obviously, I want to live here. I love this country. But I’m grieved that in my country, we can legally have abortions with limited restrictions, various restrictions, et cetera. I’m grieved by that. But you’re right. Changing hearts and minds. I want the law to say no. But I also don’t want women to say I want to have an abortion or for a man to say, you’re going to have an abortion. We want women to not choose to terminate their pregnancies. And that’s the condition of our heart. And I think it takes a lot of different it takes God’s people, ultimately, it’s the church. It is the church. I will tell you this when I attend a church. So I’m not railing against you guys out there. I’m talking to us guys. Abortion is legal in our land because the church allowed it to happen. What if we had said no in 1973? What if instead of saying, well, maybe safe, legal, rare, okay, what if we had said no. All life is sacred, no matter whether it’s wanted, quote, unquote, or unwanted. So if it’s an issue that we have to I believe that Christians have to own, because if a non believer decides they want to kill, murder, lie, they don’t know the Lord. They’re accountable, obviously. But we’re God’s people. We are supposed to be the ones who are fighting for those who cannot defend and fight for themselves.

Yeah, tell me about what did Google do? I never heard of that. What did Google do? What have they not done? Yeah, okay. And your listeners can fact check this, but there was I believe it was the attorney general of New York fact check that, because I don’t have the data in front of me. But she has called for Google to not just make it so that pregnancy centers cannot use Google AdWords, which is pay per click, where you run ads that we can’t this hasn’t happened yet, but she’s asked Google to make it. And we’ve also had some movement in the House and Senate on this as well, to kind of restrict pregnancy centers access to Google Ads, as well as she called on Google to purge pregnancy centers from Google entirely so we don’t exist. You can’t find pregnancy centers in the United States on Google. That is what she asked Google to do. And that’s when the attorney general of Virginia, attorney general from one other state it may be Kentucky, I’m not looking at it right now, but one other AG jumped in, and they said, if you’re Googling, if you’re considering this, you can’t consider this. What they have done is, guys, the way that we market to women. So the name of the ministry, as you know, is Life First. Well, that’s not the name of our medical centers, because the women we’re reaching, as you know, are the women most inclined to abort. So the name of the pregnancy medical centers are First Care, women’s Health. They’re medical clinics. They’re for women. They’re pregnancy medical clinics. So we market our pregnancy centers as giving women information, abortion information, so that they can have a consultation with a medical professional to determine what they’re going to do. So we’re reaching and marketing to the woman who’s torn. Are you considering abortion? Are you considering the abortion pill? Talk to us. We can help you understand your options. So Google has if this has been a year or so, maybe longer, where Google? And actually, maybe much longer, google now on all of our Google Ads and all pregnancy centers ads, it says not an abortion clinic. So if all you want to do is have an abortion, you don’t even want to know that there’s another option out there. You may never click on our ad. We don’t think that’s really hurt because we continue to be really busy, but they’re actively looking for other ways. And here’s the thing. They’re not for us they’re not for us. Google is one of those businesses that’s paying its employees to go to other states to have abortions if they can’t get one in their state up to determine which they want to have it. So they’re not the good guys. So we know the deck is stacked against us. We know it’s a losing proposition. I mean, it is. It’s like playing football with flying backers, and you’re the little guy. I should even use the reference. I don’t even know any football references. But we’re just set to lose. But we’ve got to attract these women. How are you going to attract it if we can’t use the Google AdWords platform?

And beyond that, if they ever decide they’re going to poof, we’re gone from Google entirely. That’s going to really hurt us. What’s our recourse? So that’s just kind of and if you keep track of these things, there’s things like this happening all the day, all the time. Elizabeth Warren made a comment about how we need to shut pregnancy centers down across the country. She’s a massive bird. Oh, my goodness. Yes. And this is an equal, I should say it’s an easy search. It might not be that easy to find. It should be an easy search because you should be able to find it. But Elizabeth Warren said, so two pregnancy centers in Massachusetts were vandalized. I do not know if she said anything about that. Like, hey, guys, don’t vandalize a pregnancy center. I don’t know. But she did say pregnancy centers, we’ve got to shut them down. They deceive women. She said we have to shut them down in Massachusetts, and we have to shut them down all over the country. She said, you should not be able to torture a pregnant woman like this. This is what Elizabeth Warren, who has presidential aspirations, said. And there was actually a really funny skit Ali Beth Stocky did going into a pregnancy center with a wig looking like Elizabeth Warren pointing out all the torturous things we do, like give away diapers and pack and plays and show people the ultrasound. It was really kind of really funny. We enjoyed it here at our center. So, hey, we know who our enemies are, and our enemy is Satan. It’s not man. It’s not the Senate. It’s not Google. It’s not the New York. Whatever your newspaper is, I won’t name it. It’s not that. It’s the enemy of our souls. And the folks who are working for him are just people who were deceived and misled, who are working for Him, and we know who we’re working for, and we continue to serve in his glory. He is still going to find ways to rescue these children, lead these women and these men to Him.

Yeah, definitely. You know what came to my mind as we were talking about that? Two things, of course, if God before us, who can be against us? But also, I thought these people were pro choice. But it seems like yeah, because if they’re pro choice, why don’t give the woman a choice with pregnancy centers like yours and places like Planned Parenthood. Now, I do agree with Planned Parenthood. If your name is poor choice, it would be nice if you have a choice. Yeah, I agree. And that’s why we know that this is Satanic, because when is Satan satisfied? When does he ever say, hey, that’s enough. I know you’ve got a sex addiction, but we’re done now where I know you’re addicted to this drug. I’m going to stop, you’ve had enough. Satan is never, ever satisfied. And there is something and I don’t understand if there is something supernatural, just like there’s something in the blood of our Lord Jesus, there is something about the blood of innocent babies that Satan just cannot there’s never ever, ever enough. And that’s why it can’t be really about a choice. It’s got to be about wounding and hurting and killing as many as possible and setting up that cycle of not just one abortion, two abortions, three abortions, you’ve got a lifestyle. And guess what? I don’t mean to speak in gross generalizations, but a woman who’s had an abortion is going to have a child, right? And you have a cycle of this death. And of course, we see it in our inner cities. We know where these abortion clinics are being set up. They’re being set up in places where they can slaughter as many human beings as possible because there’s never enough. Yeah, and unfortunately, as you mentioned earlier, most of these places are in neighborhoods where low income folks live and that will equate to majority black or majority Hispanic and stuff like that, which is of course, definitely a shame.

Let me ask a question about we talked about how Google and all these other big tech companies just are bending over backwards trying to find ways to hinder people’s ability to find an option, to find a better option than to abort their babies. Now, as part of their efforts, people do come to your clinics. Can you tell us when the people come and they listen to what you have to say and they seriously consider everything that you’ve presented them with, what percentage would you say change their mind on abortion after having interacted with you? So it’s a great question and I would love to have a succinct and easy answer for you, and I’m going to tell you why I can’t. So the industry standard number of pregnancy centers across the country from Minneapolis to New York City, anywhere in between, the industry standard is 82% of women who see an ultrasound in a pregnancy center choose life. 82%. Wow. That’s a great number. And that’s worth getting excited about. But I’m going to tell you why I keep talking instead of just give that data point, because that’s all communities across the country. Some of these communities are with women who are called likely to carry. They just need a little help. Praise the Lord. We’re glad they’re ministered too. That’s not our demographic. If we’re seeing women who are likely to carry their baby, they just want some free medical services. We’re not making room for the women who are going to go to the abortion clinic if we don’t have room for them. So we are not looking at 82%. The other reason why it’s really hard to give you a number is because we don’t know. So we have a phone number, right? She comes in, she gets a pregnancy test, she gets an ultrasound, she may even get a second ultrasound. And she tells us when she comes in, I’m going to have an abortion. Then she sees the ultrasound and she says, I might be able to do this. I’m not sure. I’ve got a lot to think about. And then we call her and she doesn’t answer. And we call her again and she doesn’t answer. What happened? I don’t know. I don’t know. And we don’t assume she aborted. Hey, sometimes those I don’t knows come in and they bring a baby in and it’s like this woman told us she was going to have an abortion and this is her child. So I don’t have a good number for you because of the unknowns. I mean, I would say about I should look at my stats, really, to give you a fresh look, but over 30%, we just never hear, we never have an outcome.

But I will say this, and it’s anecdotal, but many who are what we call abortion minded, who are determined to have an abortion, will see that officer will come in here and they will soften and they will change and they will say, maybe others say, I saw a heartbeat, there’s no way I can terminate. There’s no way I’m having this baby. So we do see that every single day. But yesterday we had a woman here and we just prayed and we’ll stop and we’ll just pray vigilantly because she said, I can’t do it, and here’s all the reasons why I can’t do it. And they’re good reasons, right? In a natural sense, they’re good reasons. I won’t go into her story, but there were a lot of forces coming against her. Obviously we want her to have that child, but it was a hard decision. So what is she going to do? I don’t know. She said she’s going to terminate. She might not. So I’m sorry I can’t give you a better number than that. I know it’s not 82%, but we do know we are having impacts and every day we have an opportunity to have an impact.

Yeah, that’s good. And of course, if you can’t reach them after the first or second visit, of course, then the numbers will be difficult. I wonder, do you team up with adoption agencies and stuff like that from women who say, you know what, I see the ultrasound. I really want to have this baby now, but I can’t keep the baby. Do you provide references or even relationship with adoption agencies that can facilitate that? We do, and we get that question all the time, and I love it, and we absolutely do. We are some of the biggest proponents of adoption that you will ever meet in your whole entire life. We present adoption as an option, so we present it with every woman who’s considering termination. We present adoption. We do work with local adoption agencies that we are fully confident in. If she’s willing, we will even in that counseling room, say, if you’re considering adoption, I’ll make a phone call right now to one of our adoption agencies, and you can have a conversation right now and set up an appointment to meet with that person at the adoption organization to find out more about what it means to have an adoption plan. Make an adoption plan. I’ll tell you, here’s the sad part. So many women come in already shut down to adoption. They just won’t consider it because what they believe about adoption, they may know somebody who’s been hurt through an adoption, whatever the situation is, and they’ll say, I can’t put my baby through that. Or they’ll say they just have these preconceived notions. There’s open adoptions now. There’s so many different options, and she’s in control, she’s in the driver’s seat. She can be part of that adoption plan. And that’s what the adoption organizations do. They help her to take control of finding a family who can love that baby in a way that she can’t. What we need is a culture, and we can’t do it. Little guys in the pregnancy centers can’t do it. We need a national campaign that educates our culture about what adoption is. So when she comes into pregnancy centers, she doesn’t say no. She says, yeah, I’ve heard about it, and tell me more. So we really have an uphill battle when she comes in and that crisis. I can’t believe I’m pregnant. I thought it was six weeks. I’m ten weeks along. I mean, this happens all the time. I can’t believe it. She just is like, if you know somebody who’s been in crisis or you’ve been in crisis, it’s hard to process everything. So we do present adoption, but we can only take it so far. During that first appointment, when we follow up, we’ll call her and say, hey, we talked about adoption. We gave you some referrals. Have you had a chance to call one of those organizations? No, not yet. Okay, well, can I recommend that you call them, maybe call them this week and really try to encourage her to make that decision? But, I mean, the short of it is, and you’re going to hear this from every pregnancy center you talk to, unless you know somebody who’s got the secret to how to do this. It’s an uphill battle. It’s not a decision most abortion minded women will make because, as you said earlier, the abortion industry has been believing the abortion takes the problem away.

What can people do to help further your efforts in this very important work? People who are not involved in the day to day life first or care first or anything like that may be regular people in the local Prince William County area or perhaps anyone listening to this podcast. What can regular people do who want to see baby saved, women saved, fathers saved? What can we do to help further your efforts and get more involved than perhaps they are right now? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. There are a number of things that you can do, and the first one is to pray. Pray for our work. Some of the practical things that you can pray for is pray that women continue to be drawn to this ministry instead of going to the abortion clinics. Pray for, as the Lord puts it on your heart, pray for the women who are in Woodward and man asks that day in the pregnancy centers making life and death decisions. Pray for very practically, pray for that work. Pray that the message of our work goes out and isn’t truncated by the forces that are coming against us.

Also, we always need volunteers. We do have staff, and we’ve got amazing staff. In fact, we have two open positions right now. We have been searching for quite some time for a bilingual frontline coordinator, a woman to basically be I mean, receptionist is really the role, but she would be translating. We have over 40% of our patients are Hispanic. Now, that’s not all Spanish speaking, but we do get quite a few Spanish speaking patients, and it’s really hard to administer them when you have limited resources. So if you know somebody or you are somebody who’s bilingual looking for a three to four day a week job, we’d love to talk to you. Also, a client advocate. We’re looking for one staff client advocate, a woman to meet with these women and do that late counseling that I told you about and share price. It is an awesome job. We also need volunteers to do those same sorts of functions. So volunteer client advocates, volunteer translators, bilingual folks or even English speakers is fine, but those are our needs. We have a men’s ministry, and I really tell you what, I’m getting sore throat from talking about this in churches. We have a desperate need for men, and we need guys, we need dads. We need men to be men. Can I say that? Can I say that in 2022 for men with knowledge that children are a gift of God and that we need men to come into our privacy centers, administer to dads, and tell them they can be, and guess what? They are a dad. Right? Ready or not, you’re a dad and what is that like? And just encouraging them and walking along because what happens sometimes is the dad says, I want her to have the baby, but she doesn’t want to have it and it’s her choice, so whatever she wants to do, I’m going to support her. That’s not support and that’s not fighting for that baby. And by the way, sometimes the mom and the dad haven’t even had a conversation, so encouraging them to talk. So yes. So volunteer women to minister to women and men to minister to men. We are missing men. Men come into our waiting room. They sit in the waiting room when they leave and there’s not anybody to meet with them because we don’t have enough male client advocates. So that definitely being a prayer warrior is ongoing. If you go to our website, lifefirstva.org, you’ll find our application to volunteer. You’ll find text. You can text to pray to be part of our prayer hotline that goes out once a week or twice a week on urgent needs that we have.

And of course, always we have a financial need that’s going to be true of any missionaries. We are only supported by local people, by churches. We are a ministry of the community. So if you’re interested in maybe sewing once or giving us a monthly gift to support our work, that would be tremendous. Lifefirstva.org you can give online or there’s a PO box in there if you prefer to send a check. Those are some tangible ways that you can help out.

Great. Do you offer training for folks who want to help in terms of counseling and stuff like that? Oh, yeah, thank you for that question. Absolutely. We have a rigorous training process, so if anybody is interested in being a volunteer, I have people, I kind of joke. They say, Call me out, let me know if you need help. One day I’ll come by. It’s like that’s not quite a drop in sort of an engagement. It’s a very real commitment. There are months of training to get you ready to be in that counseling room, how to share the gospel. It’s really dense training that gets you there. I’m ensuring that the folks who bring in here are on the same page. Are you burdened for the gospel? Because if you’re not burdened for the gospel, there’s probably another ministry that should be a really good fit. How do you feel about somebody who’s had an abortion? Are you like, I could never do that. What kind of a person? Well, then this is probably not the ministry for you because you’ve got to have that heart of sensitivity and compassion. So, yes, a great deal of training and an internship program. You’re observed, you observe and you are observed before you’re able to really be free, be set free to be able to be on your own and be a counselor. I’m going to tell you the truth. I mean, it really is kind of I mean, this sounds a little maybe I should say it kind of a weeding out process during the training because it’s not for everybody. You’ve got to come in, and the women have a weekly schedule. They come in once a week. I got three people today, right now on this day, who are coming into training because they’re awesome. They come in every day at this time. They’re coming in for training at the same time. They’re going to have different shifts. But it’s a regular four hour increment every single week where we rely on that volunteer. She’s going to be here. She’s going to be in Woodbridge from ten to two on Wednesday. I know I can count her. Now, obviously, she can go on vacation, she can go to Orsan’s wedding. I mean, things happen. But generally speaking, that volunteer is there and she is available, and we treat her like a staff member with a lot of the same responsibilities.

The model for men is different. We currently have men on call, which means if we know we’ve got a father coming in, we have one of our male client advocates available in one of our centers to meet with that dad when he comes in. And we may 1 day shift to having shifts for the men, but we’re going to need a whole lot more men to be available for that to happen.

All right, so, Becky, let’s kind of wrap it up and tell us, I know you support the woman and the fathers emotionally and spiritually, but go a little bit deeper on that and tell us, how do you actually point them to the greater need of salvation? Amen. That’s great. That happens in the counseling room, and it’s not a canned sort of okay, now we say these lines. These are spirit led meetings where these women have objectives. The women who counsel the men, too, they have objectives, and they want to find out what her barriers are to her pregnancy or to carrying her child. If she’s open to adoption, what resources does she need to help her make a decision to have the child and then passing her off to medical for the ultrasound? But like I said, it’s also in that counseling room where we’ll say, well, you’ve given us a lot of information, or you’ve told us a lot about where you are, and we appreciate that. I just want to share, and this is just an example. Like I said, it’s not canned, but I would just like to share with you. I have a lot of hope and I have comfort and peace, and I know you’re going through something really hard right now, but you know what’s helped me when I’ve gone through hard things? You know that this is a Christian organization. I think they told you that when you came in here. So then that’s where we open the door and we just share Christ. So this person may be from another country where they’ve never heard the name Jesus. And by the way, during the counseling, we’ll get a sense of her spiritual belief. We’ll ask her, what are your spiritual beliefs? So we’ll kind of know where we’re starting. Oh, I go to church, or My mom took me to church, or Man, I’m never going to church again. That place did this. So we kind of know where is she? So I know you say you go to whatever the religion I’m not making fun of, but they say they’re seeking. Okay, you tell me you’re seeking, you regularly worship. Okay, well, let me just tell you where my hope and my faith comes from. I just want to give that to you. And at the end of sharing Christ, we’ll say, now is that a decision that you’d like to make today? Do you want to pray to put your faith in Jesus? And you know what? She can say no, and many times she does. And we treat her the same way. It’s not like there’s any difference in services. Okay, well, I’m going to give you a Bible. Maybe they’ll give her a Bible, depending on where she is. You can read this and learn a little bit more, but making an invitation or she might say, I’m a Christian. Okay, well, great. So what does that mean to you? Well, I mean, my mom took me to church. Okay, so you told me you’re a Christian, so let me explain to you what it means to be a Christian. And we’ll have women say, I never heard it like that before. I would like to pray to receive Jesus, I would like to pray to be saved.

So we have people at different places, we get Christians who aren’t saved, you know what I mean? So sharing that message of salvation and what it means and one other thing we hear frequently is I don’t want to make that decision today. And do you know why? Because she has to get her life together, right? Can’t pray now because I’m not ready. OK, I respect that. Look, we don’t push, I respect that. But can you tell me why? Why do you think you’re not ready? Well, I get this and this. Well, look, I wasn’t ready either when I made the decision. I had a lot of problems, a lot of things going on in my life, but we’re never good enough, right? We never can be good enough and be ready for Jesus. He’s ready for us. So there is no reason why you can’t make this decision today if you want leading in that prayer. And the other thing you should know is we celebrate around here at life first, when there is a decision, if it’s in Woodbridge, I get a text message saying salvation. If it’s here in Manassas, somebody comes upstairs or they send us a text message and. We celebrate because there’s a party in heaven and it’s a big deal. We don’t always know when there’s a baby born, right? We may hear about it later, but we can’t celebrate. Like, right now there’s a baby born, but we can celebrate when there’s a decision for Jesus. So that’s what keeps his work going. If it wasn’t about Jesus, I think we would have all gotten tired a long time ago and said, I’m going to do something easier. But it’s about Jesus and it’s about rescuing children.

Amen. Well, Becky Sheets, thank you so much for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast. Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure. Yeah, definitely.

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