While a planned pregnancy can be a wonderful and exciting moment, quite the opposite can be said about an unplanned pregnancy, as many factors can make it an agonizing ordeal for expectant mothers. Aware of the confusion and sometimes desperation that these women face, one group called Helping Hand is using their knowledge and understanding of this difficult time to offer counsel, facts, and most of all support to mothers with unwanted pregnancies. And they're doing it with an intriguing newspaper campaign:
Indira Craig reporting,
Indira Craig
Unwanted pregnancy - it's a burning issue across society that no one seems to have the answer for - but maybe these folks do. They put an ad in the paper, and we called hoping to find the solution that eludes so many. It's an ad from the Helping Hand Pregnancy Counseling Center, a staunch pro-life volunteer agency based in Benque Viejo and focused on helping pregnant women contend with every possible problem including abortion.
Margaret Robinson, Director of Helping Hands
Usually the women who come to us have some kind of problem with their pregnancy and maybe, in a state a confusion, don't know what kind of decision to make. And so what we try to do is provide information on abortion, how abortions are performed, what are the physical and psychological risks of an abortion. If in our counseling we find out that the woman has other problems surrounding this, we would refer her to Human Development in Cayo or Family Services if she thinks she is interested in having the baby adopted, if she decides to have the baby, and she does not feel that she can raise the child herself.
Indira Craig
So while most women are searching for more information about the very sensitive and illegal issue of abortion, Robinson says that Helping Hand is there to assist not only in that but in every way possible - from defraying medical expenses to providing clothing for the mother and child - all in an effort to make sure that these women have meaningful alternatives to abortion.
Margaret Robinson
Our hope is to offer information, true information, and care and support on a one to one basis to any woman in Belize who has a pregnancy that is a problem and who needs help. That's basically where we are going and it is our mission, which is just to help one woman at a time to face this problem and give her the support which she needs to make a good decision.
Indira Craig
And while that decision is framed within the moral strictures of a pro-life outlook, in the real world, harsh necessity often outweighs the luxury of morality, and that's where the real battle over unwanted pregnancies is waged. So for Helping Hand, it is their hope that with this type of support, those women who are battling the hardship of an unwanted pregnancy will have somewhere to turn.
Robinson added that they have received over two hundred calls since they have been advertizing, with most of the calls coming from women between the ages of 16 to 28. Presently, they have six volunteers working out of their office and hope to branch out to Belize City by the end of the year.