If you are a pregnant college student or single mother, go to the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D. Contact the admissions office, and they will help you.
Last week’s announcement after a Mass of Thanksgiving at the cathedral there for the Supreme Court’s end to Roe v. Wade reminded me of a promise in the 1990s in New York. The now late Cardinal John O’Connor said that if you are pregnant and in need of help, come to the Catholic Church in New York and we will help you. He founded a community of religious sisters to make good on that promise, and it’s now 120-something strong — and has expanded beyond New York (Connecticut, Denver, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Toronto, and Washington, D.C.).
A family’s donation has made the Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s Community of Mothers at UMary possible — providing free room and board for single mothers and childcare so they can attend the classes they need for their undergraduate degrees. The university says that the help goes beyond the basic material needs of expecting and single moms, fostering community and giving formation for success beyond graduation. They’ve also asked the Bismarck community, as the university unpacks how this is all going to look, to reach out if they want to be involved, “with either time or treasure.”
The website for the admissions office at UMary is here.
Beyond Bismarck: Are you a college student? A professor? An alumnus? On a board? Do you know what your school has to help pregnant students and young families? If you are given the answer: We don’t have pregnancies here, that means there are abortions happening, and you have a problem to tackle.
Outgoing Catholic University president John Garvey wrote on the day of the Dobbs decision:
Being pro-life means much more than opposing abortion. The pro-life movement is about building a civilization of love, through a commitment to life at all stages. Many unsung heroes in the movement have been doing this work with quiet dedication for years. We should be grateful to them and inspired by their moral clarity. “When we are clear about who we are and where we are going,” said Msgr. Shea, “we can foster that civilization of love. Because the very same Voice that called us also imparts to us a love that is beyond our own capacity.”
As a University, we can contribute to building a civilization of love in a number of ways. We should begin by looking close to home. At any university a significant portion of the population (students and employees) are of childbearing age, and unplanned pregnancies are a part of life. How do we care for mothers and children here? How do we strengthen the fathers? How do we better support all families who are part of the Catholic University community?
Second, what can we do for our neighbors in the Archdiocese and the District of Columbia? Our students go in large numbers to pray at abortion clinics. I applaud their commitment to prayer and witness. If our efforts there are successful, what can we do to care for the babies who are born into our community rather than aborted?
I have asked our senior leadership team to convene a working group to look for ways we can be more welcoming to mothers and babies, and to report back to the community in October, which is Respect Life Month.
In our culture decisions like Dobbs are usually followed by strophe and antistrophe of angry voices. Let us not join that chorus. Let us instead try to build a civilization of love.
That committee has been at work, and we’ll see some leadership from my alma mater in the weeks to come.
Last week, I visited the headquarters of Heartbeat International (I wrote a little about the visit here). They are some of the people leading the way to a civilization of love, so mothers can be mothers and don’t have to succumb to the tremendous pressures to have an abortion. They’ve been doing it since long before Dobbs, and they need more people joining their efforts post-Roe.