Advocates for Life See Hope, Cooperation, and More Work to Do

Coalition Also Working for a New Bus

By Charles Molineaux

The Houston Coalition for Life (HCL) starts a new year with a mission to re-energize pro-life advocacy, as well as a challenging new project to replace its iconic "Big Blue" mobile pregnancy resource center.

The nonprofit also finds itself staying the course on its crucial, heartfelt, and most familiar role, protecting unborn children from abortion and helping expectant mothers, often starting by simply introducing them to their children with an ultrasound scan.

"It gets emotional," said Janette Garcia, who has been an ultrasound technician at the HCL's pregnancy resource centers for eight years. "Once they get to see the baby, the heartbeat, they start to cry, because they realize this really is a living person."

That has remained the group's mission, even as legal protections for unborn children in Texas have improved.

"We haven't changed what we do," observed Executive Director Christine Melchor. "We've actually gotten busier."

After two decades of pro-life service, the HCL helps thousands of pregnant women every year with referrals, counseling, maternal assistance workshops in childbirth, parenting, nutrition and finance, and supplies like diapers, as well as connections to resources for shelter if needed.

And it provides those crucial ultrasound scans that give mothers, and sometimes fathers too, their first look at their growing baby awaiting birth. HCL's statistics show that 93 percent of women with positive pregnancy tests embrace life after seeing the ultrasound proof that they already have a living child.

"About 2 weeks ago, we had a young couple," Garcia recalled. "She was about to graduate and she was asking 'what am I supposed to do now?' She got to see her baby at eight weeks. They were both crying. They ended up continuing the pregnancy. It's such a rewarding feeling when they come back. Their faces have changed. Their attitude is different."

"There's a real 'aha! moment' for a lot of the moms," Melchor said. "It's that ultrasound machine that through the grace of God changes hearts and minds."

Very importantly, in a field where politics can sometimes intrude, Melchor reports that the HCL's focus on the life, health and welfare of expectant mothers and their children, especially those in poverty, has brought involvement and help from a broad range of friends largely free from friction over philosophical differences.

"Some of our supporters, our teachers in labor and delivery or breast feeding may not agree with us on everything," she said. "But they respect our beliefs. We don't go into political issues. We're not political."

"We are that bridge to prenatal care," Coalition Development Director Alexandra Sizemore added, "that first stop when a woman discovers she's pregnant and she's in a crisis situation. We're there to share resources, then she's able to navigate her prenatal care, especially in underserved communities. Everyone can support that."

In 2025 the coalition hopes to upgrade what has become a marquee ultrasound location, the mobile pregnancy resource center in a full-sized bus known as "Big Blue." One of the HCL's mobile Blue Blossom Pregnancy Centers which take services to communities where they are most needed, Big Blue has been strategically parked near the large Planned Parenthood (PP) location on Gulf Freeway in downtown Houston, six days a week, since 2011. While Planned Parenthood no longer performs abortions there, the bus remains an opportunity for women to access tests, counseling, referrals and a free ultrasound (which Planned Parenthood does not offer) before they receive a pro-abortion message from PP across the street.

"Women are still going there," said Sizemore. "So we're providing another option, giving life affirming resources."

Mechanically, the Big Blue bus itself is feeling its age (It's in the shop for repairs as of this writing.) and a key initiative this year will be replacing it with a similar big bus resource center. In the coming months, a new bus, which Sizemore tentatively dubs "New Blue," will be a high priority focus for fundraising, so that same valuable life-affirming alternative can continue in that key location. "As long as Planned Parenthood is still there, we need to be there," Sizemore said.

For advocates for life, the political and legal landscape has become more complicated. Most abortions are indeed illegal in Texas under the state's Human Life Protection Act and after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision which let states regulate abortion. But some expectant mothers now travel out of state, to states where abortions are legal, or illegally obtain the abortion pill untracked in the mail, often without adequate medical supervision.

"We can't relax," Melchor cautioned. "It has only become more challenging and we're not getting as much support because people think abortion has ended. But it hasn't. We're trying to get the message out."

This new environment has also changed the imperative to offer counseling. By the time a Texas mother is walking into a clinic for an abortion, she could be hundreds of miles away in another state where abortions are legal, having spent hundreds of dollars to get there, and her mind may be made up. So, for advocates, the time to have a pro-life conversation has become much earlier. "Every day we see women considering going across state lines or getting abortion pills," Sizemore said, "so it's so important for pregnancy resource centers, life affirming care, to be throughout our city, and throughout our country."

Melchor notes that the harsh street-level acrimony from pro-abortion activists has largely died down since the Dobbs decision. Pro-life prayer lines no longer face hostile "escorts" walking women into abortion clinics. Meanwhile, protests outside the HCL's main offices or its mobile clinics have stopped. But the coalition's outreach efforts have only intensified since then. In 2022, the fourth mobile Blue Blossom Pregnancy Center van was launched, to increase contact and provide services in areas such as Spring Branch where the HCL has been cultivating a familiarity with the community to help make expectant mothers comfortable about coming in for help.

For Melchor, that is where the important changes in hearts and minds can begin, even as the debate over laws may continue elsewhere. "We are the feet on the ground," she said. "We are the pro-life voices doing sidewalk counseling, standing and praying, offering women help, right there, right now. We don't see it changing much until there's a conversion of hearts." We've been saving hearts and lives, one mom, one baby, at a time."