Thanks to the combined efforts and contributions of three area Knights of Columbus councils, Arkansas Pregnancy Resource Center, also known as St. Joseph’s Helpers, in Little Rock has received a new ultrasound machine costing just under $30,000.
“This is just such a blessing,” said executive director Nicole Lashbrook, whose center is across the street from the state’s only surgical abortion clinic. “Nationally, a woman who sees her baby on ultrasound is 80 percent less likely to choose abortion and in our center, women choose life 50 percent of the time.”
The machine was procured through the national Knights of Columbus Ultrasound Initiative, which requires local councils to raise half the funds needed for the new technology and then matches the other half. Marc Rios, deputy grand knight of Council 812 in Little Rock and a member of Cathedral of St. Andrew, spearheaded the local effort.
“We began with a baby bottle campaign at the cathedral and also at Our Lady of the Holy Souls (Church),” Rios said. “When Council 11604 over at St. Jude Church in Jacksonville heard about it, they offered to do another baby bottle campaign there. We also got a generous donation from Council 10167 at Christ the King (Church) in Little Rock.”
All told, the cooperative effort netted the $13,134 needed to trigger the national match and the machine was delivered Dec. 19.
Mike Kieffer, Arkansas state deputy for Knights of Columbus, said in just four years of the program, 350 untrasound machines have been bought nationally at a total cost of more than $10 million. In Arkansas alone, Knights of Columbus councils have used the program to buy machines for pregnancy resource centers in Mountain Home, Cherokee Village, Fayetteville and Hot Springs and will soon deliver one at a center in Morrilton.
When Bishop Anthony B. Taylor arrived to bless the new machine Jan. 17, it was still shrouded in bubble wrap until a technician could set it up. Looking on with a group of other Knights and several guests, Rios joked, “Well, I don’t know about a guy who just got ordained, but hopefully a bishop’s blessing has enough behind it to penetrate a couple layers of plastic.”
The center’s outmoded machine was bought by Council 812 almost five years ago. The new machine gives the mother a better view and improved connectivity with the center’s systems, Lashmore said.
The center’s usage spiked in 2013 with 59 women — roughly half who visited the center — choosing life over abortion. This compares with 34 women who made the same choice, again, about half of the total who visited the center, in 2012. Lashmore said a major contributing factor for the increase was the backlog of cases at public health clinics around town that would require a month’s wait or longer.
Speaking from the perspective of ministry, she has a much less clinical explanation for how more women in crisis are finding their way to her door.
“We have a certain number who say they came to us by mistake,” she said. “I tell them, ‘It’s not Mapquest that brought you here.’ They’re also surprised at how nice we are. We just show them God’s love and say, ‘What do you need?’”
