A pro-life sanctuary in the United States has provided a safe space since 2005 for more than 300 mothers who chose life for their children.

Visitation House, in Worcester in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, opened in 2005.

Since then, this haven for women has been a home for mothers and their newborn children, empowering and providing support for women who, becoming pregnant in difficult circumstances, chose not to abort their babies.

“We’re essentially trying to get these women to see themselves differently, and how they fit into the world differently, and really try to empower them by understanding that they have a right to be treated a certain way”, said the executive director of Visitation House, Grace Cheffers.

“We are a program designed to help a woman change her course in life.”

Supporting mothers

The refuge exists specially to protect women and their children from an anti-life culture that promotes abortion as a legitimate answer to pregnancy. Women who are taken in by the house are mothers who took the courageous decision to keep their children.

“Most of the women who come in the door are in survival mode because they oftentimes have been kicked out of their house because they’re pregnant”, Cheffers explains.

“With abortion being legal, their boyfriends feel totally justified in saying, ‘Terminate or get out’… And they can’t find it in their hearts to terminate, so they wind up homeless — and then they call us.”

A former resident of Visitation House, named Lyne, said: “I was in need — not financially… I still had my job... but mentally, I needed help... I was on my own — no one to talk to; no one to help me…

“They helped me be a mother… I would say, ‘Oh, I’m not ready to be a mother. I don’t know what to do with my baby...’ and now look at me, by myself in my apartment with my baby!

“We help each other... We were a family… They helped me a lot to understand... what having a baby in your life is.”

“Building a culture of life”

Michael Robinson, SPUC Director of Communications, said: “Visitation House is building a culture of life, and it is wonderful to see.

“It is vital that such sanctuaries exist to encourage, as well as support, mothers in their decision to keep their children.

“Women who become pregnant often lack support, sometimes being abandoned.

“In a society that so often undermines mothers, casting them and their children aside, it is essential that pro-lifers stand up and give timely assistance, providing women with a real choice – helping them to make the right choice, to be a mother.”