DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

 

The Pregnancy Support Center, which has sought to provide mothers and their families a system of support for 40 years, will close July 16.

The center, at 1439 Magnolia St., has served almost 17,000 clients resources, services and referrals on barebones budgeting, according to center Executive Director Don Fricks.

Shelves upon shelves across multiple rooms of materials — from diapers to baby bottles to clothing for babies and mothers — are among the resources here.

There’s also self-pregnancy testing, parenting training, counseling, formula help, showers for babies, and referrals to doctors and to the Women, Infants and Children Program, which serves low-income women, infants and children in need of nutritional support.

“I feel a sense of accomplishment and extreme gratitude to the greater Bowling Green community for their support … That has been tremendous and humbling to say the least,” said Fricks, who runs the two-person operation with his decadelong programs coordinator Carol Aldridge.

Their services are all provided confidentially and at no cost.

“Our partners deserve all the credit by keeping these services up and running,” Fricks said.

The closure comes as Fricks, the 83-year-old founding director, prepares to retire.

It’s also closing, he said, because much of the center’s founding purpose has been “vindicated” by the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that reversed Roe v. Wade, a reversal that had ended the constitutional right to abortion. The center, one among about 40 statewide and thousands nationwide, was founded in 1984 in large part as an alternative to abortion following Roe v. Wade, Fricks said.

As a Christian ministry, it doesn’t support abortions, and from that standpoint, it has provided literature and discussions with clients on the subject matter for them as they make their decisions, he added. Regardless, the center has operated under the philosophy that it’s up to the person who’s pregnant to make their decision about an abortion, he said.

“Whatever she decides, she’s going to know we were kind, pleasant and thoughtful — that is our objective in the ministry,” he said.

“We don’t judge.”

And, for those who’ve had an abortion, the center is quick to remind them that God forgives, Fricks said — and it has supported those mothers nonetheless. It has also provided mothers post-abortion counseling: He recalled a volunteer who had undergone an abortion and kept it from her husband for two decades. One day, she let it out and she broke down in tears, and together they sought catharsis and healing.

“ ‘I just had to talk to somebody,’ ” he recalled her telling him.

For Fricks, operating the center has been motivated by a commitment to ministry.

One of his great joys, he said, was when a client some 30 years ago expressed her gratitude for the center’s support in encouraging her to have a child, and sharing that her granddaughter was on the way.

“That’s the kind of satisfaction that has been part of the accomplishments we’ve had at the center,” he said.