Dan Sitter, a Portland firefighter and Center volunteer, poses with children at an education day.
Center photo by Tim Baker
Just across from a bustling Trader Joe’s parking lot in Northeast Portland, a cozy house offers much of what parents or expecting parents need.
The Mother and Child Education Center, formerly affiliated with the national Birthright movement, has gone independent and taken a new name to reflect its wider-ranging work. Many Catholics volunteer at the site, which has been offering services for more than 20 years as an alternative to abortion.
Organizers say the mission has not veered off course, and that the new name speaks what has always been true here.
“Everything we do is about helping the mom have confidence in herself and feel ready to be a mom and feel good about being a mom,” says Martha MacIver, director here since 1993. “We’re here to serve women who know they’re pregnant, women who hope they’re pregnant and women who are afraid they’re pregnant.”
The center broke from Birthright in February so it could do more than it did before.
It includes space next door offered free of charge by the owner in exchange for upkeep. There, staff give classes on birthing and parenting. There are sessions on labor, nutrition, breast feeding and post-partum depression. One class even teaches how to clean house with environmentally-friendly products as a way to protect children. Sewing instruction is coming up.
That all comes in addition to free pregnancy tests and help with clothing, works associated with Birtright over the years.
On the second Saturday of each month, parents and children are invited to an open house that includes puppets, displays on oral hygiene and other important matters. There are clothes and various items for youngsters, who are watched by sitters while the parents attend classes.
At one open house each year, kids get a pair of pajamas and some warm milk then find a warm spot near the fireplace to hear a story. At another, children build planter boxes for their mothers. The open houses call many partners in to play. They include the Oregon State University Extension Service and Ecce Veritas, a secondary school near Holy Rosary Parish.
The main idea behind the center, says MacIver, is to create “a world where children are welcomed and nurtured.” She insists that there is really no such thing as a crisis pregnancy, just gifts that take a little getting used to.
“Every woman, at some point, has a moment of doubt about delivery and parenting,” MacIver explains.
The women who come are either referred by loved ones or sent by a judge. They are from all over the socio-economic spectrum and the ethnic continuum, though about 40 percent of clients are Latina. There is no means test for those who are served and everything is free.
Donors help make sure that can continue. Loyal volunteers do everything from fold clothes and fix the furnace to pray for women helped out during the day.
The center went independent mostly to allow it more breadth of service, like its own personal hotline, which operates around the clock in English and Spanish. The name change, MacIver says, has allowed people with all kinds of beliefs to see the beauty of the work and seek help. The old name, with its unintended political sound, kept some people away.
An ad campaign is under way. One woman recently came straight in after seeing an ad on the ceiling of a MAX train.
Not everyone is pleased with the change. Organizers at one Portland Catholic parish have discussed canceling an annual benefit flower sale over uncertainty brought about by independence.
Terry Weaver, national director of Birthright, had hoped the Portland house would stay in the organization. But she knew MacIver and others wanted to expand their services beyond Birthright’s strict focus — helping pregnant women have their babies. “If you can’t live within the framework of our charter, you have to change,” Weaver said from Birthright’s Atlanta office. “We hope another Birthright will resurrect itself in Portland.”
In the 1990s, a handful of Birthright offices split off to form 1st Way pregnancy centers. Eugene’s was one of them. Other than that, Weaver says, no other Birthright office has gone independent in the 40 years the organization has been active.
Birthright began in 1968 when a Canadian housewife and mother of seven wanted to help women with unplanned pregnancies. It started in a one-room office with $300 and has expanded into more than 400 chapters worldwide.
