Kathryn Hallinan, Outreach Coordinator, shares why she is passionate about transforming the culture through her work at CPCI. She also shares more about the work of our non profit medical clinic and the YOUniversity Model.
Kathryn Hallinan: Hi, everyone. My name is Katherine Hallinan and I am the Outreach Coordinator at Community Pregnancy Clinics, or CPCI for short. I just started there in July and I absolutely love it. Community Pregnancy Clinics is the largest system of pregnancy centers in the state of Florida, and one of the largest systems of pregnancy centers in the entire country which is very special. We have two clinics in Naples, one in Sarasota, one in Fort Myers and one in Gainesville at the University of Florida. We also have two mobile medical clinics that have been parked throughout the state of Florida. So we are really making a statewide impact. All of the services that we provide are free and confidential for women. So we provide free and confidential pregnancy testing, sexually transmitted infection testing, ultrasounds, Abortion Pill Reversal, three years of material assistance up to when the baby is three years old. We also provide counseling services and referral services. So we are doing everything we can to help women and save babies from abortion.
I never would have thought I would be working in a pregnancy center. I never imagined where God would place me in my life today. I recently moved to Naples right in July. I am actually from outside Philadelphia, and I’m from a very large Irish Catholic family. I have had a very, very blessed upbringing and grew up Catholic, surrounded by priests, and I loved my faith. But when it came time to going off to college, I was burst out of that Catholic little bubble that I grew up in, and I was quickly sucked into the ways and the lies of the culture, right? So that was the party culture and the hookup culture in particular. And after about two years of engaging in these activities and this behavior, I just felt so isolated and alone and empty. And I was purposely going to mass late and I wasn’t trying to, you know, find a group of faith-filled friends to hang out with. Like I said, I was just really living by the ways of the culture. And one day I remember, I was out at a bar, and there were music, there was music blaring, and strobe lights flashing, and drinks being spilled. And I just remember taking a step back from the situation and scanning the room and thinking to myself, “No one here actually cares about me.” And I left. And I walked home. And things started to change after that day because my eyes were opened to the reality of the culture, that the culture has nothing substantial to offer us young people, nothing substantial to offer us young people. And I realized I am made for so much more. I’m made for greatness. I’m made for good relationships. I’m made for a relationship with Jesus Christ, not the superficiality that the world is offering us. Long story short, I ended up going on a mission trip a few months later that knew I needed to be on. And on the last day of that mission trip, I just realized I need to transfer colleges, and I need to start living differently. And from that day on, that’s what I did, right? I went home from the trip. I applied to the different college that I ended up transferring to right away, and I just committed to living a life of virtue and living a life of chastity. So after transferring schools, I met incredible friends, I was being mentored by priests and missionaries, I was going to Daily Mass and going to the sacraments and leading a Bible study. And I just remember thinking to myself like, “this is what I’m made to do. This is how I have been called to live.” And the life of virtue brings so much joy and it is so, so fulfilling. When it came time to looking to look for a job after college, I knew I wanted to work for the Church or the pro-life movement in some capacity, and I ended up becoming a missionary with an organization called the Culture Project. And the Culture Project is a group of young people set out to restore the culture by being missionaries living in community, but then also going out in the dioceses that these missionaries are placed in and going into youth group and classroom settings, sharing with middle schoolers and high schoolers the messages of human dignity, sexual integrity, and social media. And it was really through that formation, learning about how to pray well, how to have good friendships, what the Theology of the Body means and the richness and the beauty of the Catholic Church that I just I knew more and more and more young people needed to be hearing these messages.
After finishing my year with the Culture Project, I knew I wanted to move to Naples and be with my fiancee, and I connected with Community Pregnancy Clinics. And it has been such a beautiful transition, right from missionary life to working in a pregnancy center where I’m still able to pour into other people and spread the pro-life message. Part of my role as the Outreach Coordinator is to share with young people the messages of sexual integrity. And we do that at CPCI to get to the root cause of abortion. While we will continue to meet women in crisis situations, so many of these women come from very heartbreaking, difficult situations, right where they’re in an unplanned pregnancy, or they’re struggling with a sexually transmitted infection or they’re considering abortion or they’re in an abusive relationship. And our nurses and our counselors are meeting these women exactly where they are at. We also want to get to the root cause of these issues, which is proclaiming the messages of human dignity and sexual integrity with young people, so that we meet women and reach women before for they’re in an unplanned pregnancy, before, they’re in an unhealthy relationship, before they’re struggling with an STI. So I have been going out to middle school and high school settings, youth groups and classrooms, where I can share my story, how the virtue of chastity has completely changed my life, that there’s so much richness and joy in living a life of virtue.
So many young people, they want to live great lives because that’s what we have been created for. But what’s so unfortunate is that most young people aren’t being told or mentored or taught how to do so. And through my job at Community Pregnancy Clinics, I am able to inspire, hopefully, young people to live great lives.
We’re also meeting people through our Mobile Medical clinics that I mentioned, as well as our digital marketing efforts. So our Mobile Medical Clinics are going into the most abortion vulnerable communities in the state of Florida. Those are areas where there’s the highest amount of minorities and the highest amount of college students. So while we do have a clinic at the University of Florida in Gainesville, right across from campus, directly next to sorority houses and fraternity houses where students can go and get the resources and education that they need to live healthy, happy, wholesome lives. Our medical clinics are able to travel across the state, meeting women in the most vulnerable areas. We’ve parked outside of Planned Parenthoods, at Catholic Charities, at universities: FGCU, Florida, Southwestern University, so that we can meet these college students who are statistically more at risk of abortion and sexually transmitted infections, especially before Planned Parenthood reaches them.
Not many people realize, but eight out of ten Planned Parenthoods are within walking distance of a college campus. So it’s very clear that Planned Parenthood knows their audience, right, that college students are the target of Planned Parenthood. But we recognize that. So we are going out to these areas where people are the most vulnerable to becoming targets of Planned Parenthood showing them care, compassion, giving them choices, highlighting to them the reality of all of their pregnancy options, giving them medically accurate information. In addition to our medical clinics and going into the classroom settings, we’re also reaching young people in hopes of preventing them getting an abortion or being in an unhealthy relationship through our digital marketing efforts.
So we have been investing time and effort and money to improving our digital marketing. So that has to do with our social media outreach, our SEO, our search engine optimization, and Google Ad ranking,as well as our blog posts. So when it comes to social media, we have an Instagram as well as a Facebook. Our Instagram is directed towards our clients, whereas the audience for our Facebook is our donor. So on Facebook, we’re promoting events and telling people what we are doing in the clinics and promoting awareness and things like that. Whereas on social media we are speaking directly to the women that we are serving. We’re telling them about our services, how we can help them, the resources that are out there, educational information about their health, all in hopes of protecting them from the tragedy of abortion and giving them the love and the education that they need to live good lives. When it comes to search engine optimization and Google Ad ranking, our goal is to be the highest ranked pregnancy resource in the state of Florida. We recognize that young people today are on their phones a lot, that they turn to their phones for a quick Google search if they’re in need of help or have a question. And when it comes to pregnancy resources or questions about pregnancies, STIs, abortion, CPCI is making sure that people are seeing us and our availability, our education, our resources first. So we’ve been aware of the different SEO keywords that people type in, and we are plugging them into our web pages, our social media, our blog posts, so that we come up as the first option people see when they’re looking for pregnancy help. And lastly, our blog posts. I write posts for our Facebook or our donor site and our client site, and I’m implementing those SEOs, and I’m sharing educational information with clients so that they have medically accurate information that they’re not receiving in other places.
All of what we do as CPCI is to help women and to protect them from abortion. Abortion is a tragedy. It has been blasted in the media so much recently and so much of the media what they are sharing is just simply not true about abortion and about the pro-life movement and about pregnancy centers. So many people ask us what we’re going to do since Rowe vs. Wade has been overturned, and we simply say, “Exactly what we have been doing since 1974 when our first clinic opened, helping women and men and families and saving them from the tragedy of abortion.”
Since our founding in 1974, we have saved 20,000 babies from abortion. And just last year we saved 1310 babies from abortion. The work that we do at CPCI is critical, especially right now. And as we continue to meet women in crisis situations, know that we are also meeting women before they are in their crisis situations in hopes of eradicating abortion and the destruction of it in our society. Thank you so much for listening to my story and learning about Community Pregnancy Clinics. If you know someone who needs any of our services, please visit Communitypregnancyclinics.com. Or if you would like to be a part of our CPCI family, you can visit supportcpci.com to learn how to get involved.
