With an official decision from the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade is expected any day now, the Crisis Pregnancy Center of McComb is one agency in the area that’s likely to see more people come through its doors as a result.
The nonprofit counsels women and girls with unplanned pregnancies and the understandable fear of looming parenthood.
“Even with the court case, if abortion is outlawed, people are still going to get pregnant. There’s still going to be a need. Families are still going to need items,” said Jeanine Mote, director of the center.
The center offers resources including parenting classes, baby supplies and adoption counseling to moms-to-be.
“We are pro-life. We are a ministry,” Mote said. “If somebody calls about abortion, we network with adoption agencies, so if a girl is adoption-minded, we can facilitate that and they can meet at our center.”
The Pike County chamber of Commerce recently named the center its Business of the Month.
“What y’all do for our community, the lives you change, the stories you hear day in and day out, the stressful situations you have to help people with, thank y’all so much for what y’all do,” Chamber president Rob Belote told Mote while presenting her with the award on Monday. “You are a vital part of this community.”
Mote said that in the two decades she’s been with the organization she’s worked with new mothers ranging in age from 11 to 45.
“We see a lot of young girls, a lot of girls in their 20s,” Mote said. “It just depends from year to year. For a while we were seeing a bunch of teenagers,but now it’s a bunch of people in their 20s. We do see girls in their 30s.”
And a pregnancy of “crisis” isn’t confined to the very young, Mote said.
“We see people in their 40s, maybe somebody had an affair and got pregnant, and the husband’s like, ‘I’ll keep you but you can’t keep this baby,’ “ Mote said. “We see hard things like that too.”
The center’s Baby Boutique resembles a retail shop, and new mothers who have come to the center for help can buy supplies there — just not with actual money. Instead, the center offers “Baby Bucks” to women who complete various tasks, Mote said.
“They take parenting classes and they earn Baby Bucks,” she said. ‘They come to class on time, they get a Baby Buck. They watch a parenting video, they get a Baby Buck. They have a homework assignment and a class worksheet, they get a Baby Buck for all of that.”
A pack of diapers may cost three Baby Bucks, but mothers can get four articles of clothing for one Baby Buck.
The center receives no grants. Its main fundraiser — the Baby Bottle Boomerang — produces most of its operating budget in the form of spare change. It involves sending empty baby bottles to churches, where members fill them up with change and return them to the center. Last year’s effort earned $68,421 for the center.
In 2021, the center offered 168 counseling sessions, made 31 adoption referrals and “counseled 42 abortion-minded people,” according to a center news release.
The center makes lasting connections with some of the women and babies it serves, Mote said.
“They come from when they first find out they’re pregnant until their baby’s six months old,” she said.
