A record number turned out for St. Joseph’s Helpers annual fundraising dinner Oct. 18 at the Chenal Country Club in Little Rock.
A record 400 people came to support this pro-life mission, which raises funds for the non-profit and also recruits volunteers to help with the work of the center.
“The ministry of pregnancy centers is vital and life-giving,” said Candy Gibbs, director of the Care Net Pregnancy Center in Amarillo, Texas, who spoke at the dinner. “It can mean life not only for that baby, but for that mom.”
One of the women helped this year was Shantal Henry, who came to the Arkansas Pregnancy Resource Center when she was 21 and found out she was pregnant.
“I know I had mixed emotions. I was happy, sad, scared and even sometimes mad at myself. But that’s what the APRC is there for. They gave me positive feedback and encouraged me,” she said. “My first ultrasound was very exciting experience. It was amazing to see my baby so small, turning flips inside me, when I couldn’t even see, or feel inside me. After my ultrasound, I knew I was going to continue the parenting classes.”
Henry is now the proud mother of a five-week old boy.
St. Joseph’s Helpers operates Arkansas Pregnancy Resource Center, which is across the street from Arkansas’ only surgical abortion clinic, Little Rock Family Planning Services, in west Little Rock. The center offers pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, as well as support and resources for pregnant women. The center also offers education programs on pre-natal development, parenting and sexual integrity.
Gibbs, and her father Jerry Little, a Baptist youth pastor in Texas, spoke about their experience with teenage pregnancy and abortion.
Gibbs went to Care Net Pregnancy Center as a senior in high school and found out she was pregnant.
“I know that we won’t have an abortion because I come from a Christian family and we don’t believe in that. But everybody’s going to be very upset,” Gibbs said she told the person at the pregnancy center.
Little drove Gibbs to an abortion clinic in Lubbock, Texas, on April 16, 1992.
“I decided our situation was different. After what she went through, she shouldn’t have to have this baby … I can tell you if you try to rationalize with Satan, that’s exactly what you’re going to get, ‘rational lies,’” he said. “I wasn’t trusting in the Lord. I was demanding that he fix this. When we got to the clinic, Candy was crying uncontrollably. When she came out of that room, there were no more tears.
The event raised approximately $110,000 to support abortion-vulnerable women in Central Arkansas. Arkansas Pregnancy Resource Center’s wish list for 2012 includes the ability to offer ultrasounds daily at the center.
Currently, they offer ultrasounds twice a week and have performed 193 ultrasounds since February.
The work of the pregnancy center is critical in saving the lives of babies and women, Gibbs said, because the abortion clinic will take their money, complete a procedure and send them on their way no matter how it affects anyone involved.
“And the truth is that my daughter Jessica Renee was aborted April 16, 1992. I never got to take my daughter to kindergarten. I never taught her how to drive. She would have already graduated from high school. It doesn’t matter how sorry I am, that’s still the truth. In a way, for me, it’s too late,” she said. “The precious thing is that tomorrow morning, there will be another girl, and she will look at lot like I do. And for her it is not too late.”
