Sonogram booth promotes pregnancy care center ministry_62804

Posted: 6/16/04

Sonogram booth promotes
pregnancy care center ministry

By Dwayne Hastings & Erin Curry

Baptist Press

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)—Visitors at the Psalm 139 Project booth in the Southern Baptist Convention exhibit hall viewed images of a pregnant woman's sonogram.

To promote the project's effort to provide ultrasound equipment to eligible pregnancy care centers, sonographers conducted ultrasound examinations on pregnant women in the booth, with the images broadcast on a large video screen. Exams were conducted behind a curtain within the exhibit.

One woman participating in the exam discovered she is expecting twins.

The Psalm 139 Project, administered by the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, seeks to create an awareness of the value of ultrasound technology in crisis pregnancy situations and to provide a way for individuals to give to a fund that places ultrasound machines in qualified pregnancy care centers.

"If wombs had windows, people would be much more reticent to abort babies because they would be forced to confront the evident humanity of the baby from very early gestation onward," ERLC President Richard Land said, noting sonograms provide a "window into the womb."

"Pregnant mothers who see their babies on sonograms are going to be far more likely to carry their baby to term. Ultrasound machines save babies' lives."

More than 75 percent of women in a crisis pregnancy who view an ultrasound choose not to abort. But Land estimated that fewer than one-third of all centers in the United States have access to ultrasound technology and a trained operator on site.

"Sonogram machines are very expensive, and most crisis pregnancy centers lack the funds needed to buy the equipment or have the necessary medical personnel on staff to have ultrasound machines," he said.

Terry Williams, executive director of the Central Texas Life Center in San Marcos, Texas, said she is encouraging pastors to visit their local pregnancy care centers and inquire about whether a sonogram machine is needed. The center would be able to work with the pastor to determine the cost of such a machine and how to get one, and the pastor could lead his church in raising funds to purchase it.

"How incredible a gift that would be," Williams said. "That Southern Baptist church could be the catalyst for saving babies' lives."

The ERLC has partnered with The Heidi Group for the Psalm 139 Project. Founded by pro-life leader Carol Everett, The Heidi Group is named for the daughter Everett would have had if she had not aborted the baby years ago.

"The Heidi Group started out of my sin," she told Baptist Press on the exhibit floor. "I had a termination and came to own the largest pregnancy termination clinic in Dallas. But I came to know Christ 20 years ago. I wasted the first part of my life, and now I'd like to see the last part of my life count by helping save babies."

In addition to being a ministry to save babies, Everett said, the Psalm 139 Project is an outreach to girls and women who need to know Christ.

"This is not a fight. This is a mission field," she said of the effort to change lives through sonogram use.

"My hope is for Southern Baptists to become involved and see this as a missionary outreach and to get their churches involved and to put sonogram machines in pregnancy centers. We know that these (machines) save lives, but we also know that women take better care of themselves during pregnancy. We know that 10 to 30 percent of the girls who walk through the door of a pregnancy center come to Christ. That's a real life change."