RIVERSIDE, New Jersey, December 13, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When a young New Jersey woman this spring learned what should have been joyful news – she was pregnant – she instead found herself facing a nightmare.
Mocha’s parents “weren’t really happy” to hear the news about their new grandchild, and gave their daughter an alternative: have an abortion, or get kicked out of the house.
“For a month, I was living from place to place, trying to find somewhere to live,” she said, recalling nights where she slept in parks after running out of money for hotel rooms. Because she didn’t receive welfare benefits, she said, a lot of shelters turned her away.
At last, the young mother got in touch with Good Counsel Homes, and wound up this summer at their newest house in Riverside, New Jersey. Had it not been for that, she says, “I don’t know where I’d be.” Her son, Carter Emanuel Lee, was born August 10.
Across the United States each day, pro-lifers meet another Mocha. Sidewalk counselors see her walking into an abortion clinic, red-eyed and silent, or they sit for hours at a pregnancy center urging her, often without success, to find the strength to protect her baby.
For those fighting abortion on the ground, the missing piece for these mothers and their babies – an environment of love, support, and community – is difficult to give. Christopher Bell, founder of Good Counsel Homes, wants to change that.
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“So many women only hear: you have a choice, and that choice is abortion,” said Bell. “The real choice is: do we have enough love – as a community, as a society, as a nation?”
Like countless crisis pregnancy centers across the country, Good Counsel Homes, which has several homes in the New York metropolitan area and two in New Jersey, aims to help moms be able to choose life. For Bell, this means filling the biggest need for women in crisis: family.
“What we do at Good Counsel is provide a table, we provide a house, we provide a family for those who don’t have one,” he said.
Good Counsel was founded in 1985 by Father Benedict Groeschel, the current chairman of the board, and Bell, who says he was inspired Groeschel’s work ministering to homeless youth at Covenant House. In addition to helping women at its own homes, the group operates a 24/7 national hotline to help moms find a place to stay nearby. Bell has also helped independent groups open similar homes in eight other states.
“We get five to eight calls a day on our national hotline, and many women call not needing a home, but needing someone to say, it’s OK to have your baby,” said Bell. “And women who hear that are encouraged enough to carry that pregnancy to term and to have a new life. Not only to give birth to that life, but for them to have a new life and a new perspective.”
While community is important, Bell says the work of Good Counsel doesn’t stop there: the homes provide an in-house life skills program that teaches residents about nutrition, parenting, computers, finances and job hunting. When a mom has left the home, Good Counsel provides transitional support through its Exodus program for as long as over a year after giving birth.
The day at the Riverside house begins at 6 a.m., when many of the moms leave to attend appointments, or classes towards their GED. Once home again, the girls take shifts planning and cooking meals – much of which is harvested from a large vegetable garden they maintain themselves – before sitting down to dinner together. Good Counsel program director JoAnn DiNoia says that many of the women say they can’t remember even eating a meal together with family – while others have no family at all.
Dinoia remarked how the solidarity among the mothers forms the real heart of the home, especially when sharing the joy of another birth. “The moms are so supportive of one another,” she said.
Financially, Bell says the homes depend greatly on donations and volunteer help – including that of electricians, plumbers, and carpenters – to survive day-to-day expenses. “We need a tremendous amount of support every day, financially, materially, and spiritually, to keep the house open,” he said, “and it also is an opportunity for people who want to help mothers in need to give of themselves.”
“We don’t have the millions of dollars that organizations that don’t want that baby born do, to spread their message, and we need to do it almost person-to-person,” he added.
The house at Riverside, a former convent near what was once St. Casimir Church, has strong religious overtones: filled with Catholic iconography, an in-house chapel as of this summer awaited the arrival of the Blessed Sacrament. But the residents say that Good Counsel staff is respectful of the mothers’ faith lives.
“Everyone here is so loving and caring, and they help you through everything that you’re going through,” said Mocha. “It’s not biased, there’s no judgment. I love it here.”
Click here for the Good Counsel Homes website.