By Marion Miner
Nebraska Catholic Conference Associate Director of Pro-Life & Family Policy
What do you know about pregnancy help organizations in Nebraska?
Many readers of the Register are no doubt familiar with one or more of their local pregnancy help organizations (or PHOs), which support pregnant women who would otherwise not receive what they need during a time that too often can seem lonely and overwhelming. These good organizations have played an increasingly large and important role in strengthening social solidarity in America from their beginnings in the 1960s to the present day.
The Nebraska Catholic Conference was privileged to take part in an effort in 2024 to pass Nebraska’s Pregnancy Help Act, which establishes that it is “the policy of the State of Nebraska… to encourage and celebrate pregnancy help organizations.” These organizations, our state law recognizes, “provide under-supported pregnant women with services, free of charge, that are crucial for their physical, emotional, and familial wellbeing, including pregnancy testing, pregnancy and prenatal care education, counseling, food, clothing, housing, transportation, parenting and life skills classes, child care, licensed medical care, and referrals to additional community services and material help” in the context of “personal relationships and a strong local support network… that cannot be replicated by even the best and most effective government programs.”
There’s a lot going on there, because PHOs do a lot for under-supported women and families that no one else is so well-equipped to do. The Pregnancy Help Act establishes Nebraska’s state policy that these institutions are to be encouraged and celebrated, but it goes further by encouraging Nebraskans to donate to them, and the state offers a special tax credit for those donations.
If you haven’t heard of this program yet, contact your favorite pregnancy help organization and ask them about it.
Nebraska has 15 PHOs that are registered for these tax-credit-eligible donations.
There’s more. It is especially important, right now, to pay attention to and become intimately familiar with the good work being done by employees and volunteers at PHOs in Nebraska. Their work has only increased in importance since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and we ought to be ready not only to silently support them through donations but also to publicly defend them when necessary.
As pregnant women increasingly turn to PHOs for the support, education, and connections that help them realize their aspirations in life, the abortion industry correspondingly loses business, and the narrative that women need abortion to realize their potential loses credibility. That’s the motivation for the abortion industry’s increasingly aggressive characterizations of PHOs as “fake clinics” whose services shouldn’t count as “real” care—as opposed to the sterilizations, hormonally damaging contraception regimens, and deaths offered as services by the abortion industry.
The work of pregnancy help organizations is, it seems to me, one of the best examples we have of Catholic social teaching in action.
They recognize and respond appropriately to the human dignity of the women and unborn children they encounter. They promote the common good by helping these women and children flourish as individual human beings, families, and members of society. They promote solidarity by responding generously to the reality that we as individuals, families, associations, and members of society have duties toward and responsibility for each other.
And they promote subsidiarity by “offering personal relationships and a strong local support network… that cannot be replicated by even the best and most effective government programs.” This is the kind of work that is best done face-to-face and shoulder-to-shoulder with people living in the same town or city, and pregnancy help organizations are doing it.
Not every person is called or suited to do the particular work of these organizations—we each have our own gifts and skills with which we make our contributions to building up “the good life” where we are. But I encourage you to learn more about the work being done by pregnancy help organizations in Nebraska, especially those nearest to you, and to offer solidarity to the women, children, and families they accompany however you can.
