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Community Corner

Kent Pregnancy Center Offers Help for New Parents

Volunteers at the Kent Pregnancy Center provide pregnancy tests, access to area resources, and information. But the most important thing they do is 'just listen'

Volunteers at the Pregnancy Center of Kent provide pregnancy tests, access to health resources and other information for new or expecting parents.

But the most important thing the center does is "We just listen," said Executive Director Annamarie Dalziel.

"We're not right-to-life and we're not ... political," Dalziel said. "Our goal is to support the women, and that's our approach."

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Ten area residents make up its board of directors. The nonprofit, 501 C-3 group was established in December 2009. It is supported through private donations and fundraisers.

The center, run by Dalziel and about 20 other volunteers, is located inside the Coleman Professional Building at 5982 Rhodes Road. Although it is not affiliated with Coleman Professional Services, Dalziel said the arrangement with Coleman has been "wonderful." The center can use a number of meeting rooms for education and training, she said, and some of the Pregnancy Center's clients use various Coleman Services. It's convenient for the clients to be helped in multiple ways in one location.

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About eight volunteers, called advocates, see the majority of the clients at the pregnancy center. The center is not a government agency, but it works with several government offices including WIC (Women, Infants, and Children, a federal nutrition and health program), Healthy Start (a Medicaid program) and a variety of Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services programs. The center also works with Robinson Memorial Hospital's Moms in Training program and other health care providers.

In order for a woman to receive benefits from the government, a certified pregnancy test is required. The pregnancy center provides those tests.

Even more important, Dalziel said, "We listen to them whenever they want to come in and talk."

When they realize they may be pregnant, Dalziel said, it's an emotional jolt. "They say 'I just wasn't planning on this,'" she said.

"Once you start listening to women you hear the uncertainty," Dalziel said.

They also have a lot of questions.

"They have a choice to make: to parent, make an adoption plan, or abort," she said. "Those are their choices. We want the women to be totally informed when they make that decision."

Although the advocates are not doctors or lawyers, "we inform them with what we have learned to be the body of common knowledge," Dalziel said, "because it's not common to everyone."

Most of the client advocates are retired nurses and teachers, Dalziel said. Dalziel herself is a retired nursing supervisor. In addition to listening to the women and answering their initial questions, advocates offer educational information on fetal development and pregnancy issues.

They also provide information about abortion methods, “usually in response to their questions,” Dalziel said. “We don’t exaggerate the complications … we don’t refer for abortions and we don’t suggest them,” she said.

Most of the women who come to the center have already gotten advice from their families, friends or the father of the child, Dalziel said.

Some have been “used and abused and don’t know the way out,” she said. Others have had abortions previously, and are conflicted. “You start hearing about anniversary issues,” she said, meaning the anniversary of when they got pregnant, when they had an abortion and when the baby’s birthday would have been. Because it’s a common occurrence for many of the pregnancy center’s clients, Dalziel said, the center also offers abortion healing seminars and information.

While the majority of clients seen at the center are women, "We encourage fathers, too," Dalziel said. The center plans to expand its offerings for fathers this fall. "We have a male advocate who is seeing the fathers."

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