BETTENDORF – A new monthly support group for birth mothers and fathers began last month at the Women’s Choice Center. The group meets the third Thursday of each month from 7-8 p.m. at the center, 2711 Happy Joe Drive, and is part of an initiative to help improve awareness and increase resources promoting adoption as a loving option for women facing unplanned pregnancies.
Anyone who has made the loving choice of delivering a child into the waiting arms of an adoptive family is invited to attend. The group will offer individuals the opportunity to listen, learn and share experiences, make connections and be in an emotionally supportive environment of peers.
The Women’s Choice Center initiated a partnership in 2013 with local and regional adoption agencies, Pregnancy Resources and adoption attorneys and hospital social workers to improve dialogue between organizations that facilitate adoptions. One of the group’s major goals is to improve support resources for birth mothers and birth fathers and to elevate the visibility of adoption. “We believe more women would choose adoption if they understood it better,” says Vicki Tyler, Women’s Choice Center’s executive director.
Adoption sources estimate 36 waiting families for every one child available for domestic adoption. Less than 3 percent of women facing unplanned pregnancies choose adoption. “Many women facing unplanned pregnancies believe they only have two real choices: to keep and raise the child, or to abort it. Often pregnancy centers like the Women’s Choice Center are the first to raise the adoption possibility,” Tyler said. “Adoption is a process that can be explored without commitment. Birth moms have a great deal of choice in determining who will have the privilege of raising and loving the child to whom they gave birth.”
Women’s Choice Center of the Quad-Cities is a Christian-based ministry founded in 2002 by the Life and Family Educational Trust. The center offers free services to women facing unplanned pregnancies, including pregnancy testing, obstetric ultrasound, options counseling and local resource referrals, including adoption referrals.
The center is a walk-in clinic open Monday from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the third Saturday of the month from 9 a.m. until noon.
For more information, go to www.womenschoicecenter.org or call (563) 332-0475.