I’ve been so used to reading snide MSM articles about pro-lifers in Texas who are reveling in the state’s new anti-abortion regs — and the lengths women in that state are going to have abortions.
So, when I saw a positive take on the head of a crisis pregnancy clinic, I did a double take.
On Saturday, the Washington Post profiled Tere Haring’s crisis pregnancy clinic in San Antonio and her assertion that: Give a woman some diapers and you’ll save a baby.
The best quote in the piece:
“I always tell people, ‘Diapers save a lot more babies than ultrasounds.’ ” Haring said. “I don’t want an ultrasound machine. I want tons of diapers. Buy me $20,000, $40,000, $50,000 worth of diapers because if you have a woman who comes in with four kids — yeah, looking at the baby, she realizes it’s a human being. But if you tell her, ‘I’m going to give you diapers for all four kids,’ believe me, the diapers for all four kids is going to save that baby a lot quicker than a little pennant on the screen.”
Wow — a piece about a Catholic woman doing the unglamorous work of helping the pregnant and poor through a crisis pregnancy center — written with no snark whatsoever.
That’s historic. And against the grain, judging from the horrible comments appended to the piece, many written by some really demented people who can’t conceive of someone out of the goodness of her heart doing such a work.
It’s been my position that there are tons of religious folks all over the globe who do valiant work for unpopular causes. It just takes a little digging to find them. And reporter Casey Parks, who worked for the Oregonian 11 years before coming to the Post this past September, found one.
SAN ANTONIO — Tere Haring worked the math. Already, the antiabortion nonprofit she runs had given away a record number of baby items during the pandemic. She’d helped five women a day in 2020, and she’d handed out 71 car seats, 45,569 diapers, and $71,000 in rent assistance. Then, in September, a state law banning abortions after six weeks went into effect. By late October, Haring was seeing seven or eight clients a day. The phone rang, then rang again.
That uptick was just the beginning, Haring figured. The number of abortions had fallen by half during the ban’s first month, from 5,377 statewide in August to 2,164 in September. For most antiabortion activists, that drop was a victory, proof that the restriction had saved more than 3,000 babies.
But stopping women from having abortions was the easy part, Haring often told people. What came next would be much harder. Those 3,000 babies were going to need diapers and formula and any number of more expensive items, too. The women Haring called “abortion-minded” tended to be in untenable situations. Many couldn’t afford a playpen, let alone a month’s rent.
You’ve all heard the plaint from so many; that Catholics like Haring supposedly only care about babies until they are born. Well, Haring cares about them post-birth and figures that something as simple as a diaper can make the difference between life and death. It’s the only such pregnancy center in the entire city that offers a whole year’s worth of diapers to new moms.
Listen to the details in this piece:
Haring believed it was her Catholic duty to help women who didn’t get abortions…Most crisis pregnancy centers owned ultrasound machines and other medical equipment, but Haring ran a no-frills operation. The paint was peeling in places, and her furniture was secondhand. She didn’t have art on the walls, just framed jigsaw puzzles she’d put together herself while raising 15 children.
Framed jigsaw puzzles? This place is low budget. And did you catch the part about the 15 kids?
The story jumps back to a day when Haring realized how so many demonstrators outside of abortion clinics weren’t doing anything concrete to help actual pregnant women.
She soon learned she didn’t need to block a clinic to stop people from ending their pregnancies. All Haring had to do was raise enough money to cover their rent.
There’s a lot of delicious details in the story; like how Haring wears the same black cotton dress to all her fundraising galas plus her sturdy workday shoes. Here’s someone walking the walk after doing the talk. My one quibble with the piece is that I would have liked to have known more about this woman’s faith and how it inspired her to do this work.
I once knew someone like Haring; unglamorous, a plain wardrobe; an older woman a bit on the heavy side who was there for me when I needed a crib for my newly adopted daughter and occasional babysitting when my job went overtime. My friend’s name was Linda; she was an evangelical Protestant who ran a crisis pregnancy center in northern Virginia, and she’ll remain unknown in this life except to her friends and the women she helped.
Unfortunately, I never got to write about her. Usually, it’s delightful, as a reporter, to spotlight these obscure people whose good deeds would never see the light of day otherwise. That is journalism at its best, really.
Parks has used her love of detail to cover other Catholics who man a Planned Parenthood parking lot in San Antonio. Again, note the detail and how the reporter gets into peoples’ minds.
Which is not to say I’ve always agreed with Parks’ read on things; her coverage of the “Sweet Cakes” lawsuit in Oregon being a case in point. In her writing, Parks seems to find the minority viewpoint on a given issue and runs with it. Often, people with a religious point of view are the despised minority.
So in the unlikely event that Parks may actually read this piece, I’ll just say: Ignore the jerks in the comment section. There aren’t enough folks covering the pro-lifers who make up the backbone of Texas’ opposition to abortion; Texas being one of a handful of states that never rescinded its anti-abortion statues after Roe v. Wade. Most media are branding these folks as villains. I’m glad this Post writer did otherwise by giving them a human face.