CEO, Scott Baier is the host of a new TV show in partnership with Maria Vision, a Catholic family television channel which has markets in six major cities around the country. Life Matters will air regularly and highlight the work of CPCI, a non profit medical clinic, and tackle issues surrounding the sanctity of life. Watch the first episode of Life Matters below as Scott and Janine Marrone, Founder of Support After Abortion, discuss the need for healing. Transcriptions of each episode part are included below, as well.
Episode 1 Part 1
Scott Baier: Welcome to our first special program of Life Matters where we’ll cover topics surrounding the sanctity and protection of all human life from the beginning to the end, from the womb to the tomb, from conception, fertilization to natural death. Because quite simply, life matters. I am Scott Baier, the CEO of Community Pregnancy Clinics. We are one of the largest in the state of Florida of resource pregnancy resource centers. And we work with a number of great organizations. And we are blessed to have a representative of one of those organizations today. Janine Marrone, who is the Board Chair and Founder of a great organization that we work with called Support After Abortion. Janine, thank you for being with us here today.
Janine Marrone: Thanks, Scott. I’m so happy to be here.
Scott Baier: It’s a real blessing. So before we dive in, in terms of what Support After Abortion does, let’s kind of cover what the need is out there. And then maybe that changing landscape that we’re seeing over the past 50 years in the Pro-Life Movement.
Janine Marrone: I’m happy to talk about that. I’m really relatively new to the Pro-Life Movement and Industry. I became part of it in something called Luncheons for Life a little over ten years ago. And in that process and by the way, Luncheons for Life is a grassroots networking luncheon for like minded people. And being relatively new to it, one of the things that we do is bring in outside speakers, and we brought in outside speakers like pregnancy centers. And for the first several months, the pregnancy centers talked about the more traditional things that they did to intercede with men and women who might be thinking about abortion, to intercede and not have that happen. Or and one of the the pregnancy center directors brought in a counselor who was counseling recovery or healing from abortion. And for the first time in my short time in pro life, I thought there are more casualties to the abortion story than just the baby involved. And traditionally, and even still today, we generally think about the victim or the casualty of being the baby. And there are more casualties than just that.
Scott Baier: Yeah, let’s talk about that, because I know the abortion industry wants to perpetuate the lie that really women aren’t really harmed by abortion. Can you talk about what you’ve seen and what you’ve seen in some of the research?
Janine Marrone: Men and women are harmed by abortion. So kind of advancing a little bit, when we decided to investigate more, the idea that understand more about what needs to happen in healing, one of the first things that we did is we looked at and said, “How big of a situation is this?” We sized it. We actually use consumer research to do that. And consumer research is doing something like it’s looking at America in a census kind of way and surveying America to see what the propensity of abortion was, the need for healing, where does the healing need to happen, and so on. Much in the same way that any any consumer product company would do that from McDonald’s to Procter and Gamble, so in a real objective way. And what we found out through a series of research and the way I just suggested this, there’s probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 million men and women in America who would seek healing from their abortion experience if they knew where to go to get it.
Scott Baier: So those are not just people who need help. Those are the ones who have expressed that they would.
Janine Marrone: Would seek help, would seek, and the real key to that is if they knew where to go to get it. And believe it or not, that’s not just men and women who’ve had abortions. America doesn’t know where to go to get help. If they needed to refer someone. So with we, we have over 200 curriculum or 200 programs in this country, but they go by a variety of different names. They don’t necessarily have abortion in the name. There may be a marketing issue, it could be a product issue. But the reality is, is that there are programs and people available for healing, but men and women don’t know where to go to get it.
Scott Baier: Is it accurate to say that you guys are not just a program among programs, but you’re trying to bring together this world that’s there, that’s a need for healing and it’s just not being right now. It seems like people don’t know where to go, as you said, but you’re not a program among programs, correct?
Janine Marrone: That that’s absolutely correct. In fact, Support After Abortion is a resource for clients and providers for healing in one line whether we started out to to be that is one thing. What we are today is certainly something much bigger. And that’s one of the things that we realize is that we didn’t want to be just another again, another program among programs, but we wanted to be able to aggregate all that’s out there and not and be a referral into many of those programs, but also to bring them all together, the providers that is, so that we could provide networking, best demonstrated practice practices, access to to different curriculum, bring all of this content together and leverage it for the for the provision not only of providing more collaboration, but that we can provide more capacity for healing that doesn’t exist today. But first.
Scott Baier: I just heard the three C’s.
Janine Marrone: But I missed the most important one is compassion. Thank you.
Scott Baier: Why don’t you talk a little bit about that and maybe speak to some of the leaders out there, whether they’re mental health experts or therapists or pastors, church leaders who are seeing people who are suffering from an abortion experience and don’t know what to do or how to help them.
Janine Marrone: I think that’s the biggest opportunity that we have on this topic is exactly what happened to me the first time is to move from that sense of unfortunately, condemnation, criticism, or of shock of “How could you do this?” And into a sense of understanding that it is very likely that the men and women involved didn’t just wake up and think they’re going to have an abortion, that there’s a lot of trauma associated not only with the decision, but once that decision is made. So compassion for us is bringing to a level of understanding that when a a you meet someone who has had an abortion and they let that let you know that that the first idea is not to be judgmental and to move into something like, “I am so sorry for your loss,” that movement from one not being judgmental and obliterating all of those stereotypes that you might have had about someone who has made an abortion decision to “I am sorry for your loss, and you are not alone” is a huge bridge, but it’s a big bridge to healing not just of that individual, but how it can break the cycle of failure for that individual from considering another abortion. Right.
Scott Baier: And as you know, 50% of all abortions that happen today are going to be repeat abortions. So what I’m hearing is your work is kind of not just addressing the need of that person, man or woman. Right. But actually preventing future abortions. This is powerful. Speak more about that.
Janine Marrone: Well, the thing that comes to mind are the men and women who are visiting and and sidewalk advocating, if you will, for the prevention of abortion in front of abortion clinics, Planned Parenthood and the like. And to understand that the women that are going there are very likely to have had another abortion. So how is it that we can show the face of love for them and not potentially the very the pictures that you might see or abortion is murder messaging. These women are already self condemning. They already know that and traumatized, and instead looking at that individual as a human being who probably has made a bad decision and is about to make another bad decision. And “What can I do?” or “How can I be or act so that it I am attractive?”
Scott Baier: Yeah. At CPCI, I would like to say we’re the hands and feet and voice of Christ. Right? And this idea that unless a woman feels lovable, she’s not going to be love able. And so we’ve got to be that love for her in that moment. So that’s beautiful in that compassion. You know, it’s probably for most women they’re thinking, okay, it’s not just an action or a behavior they took. They’re going to make it their identity. And isn’t that dangerous?
Janine Marrone: It is. And maybe one of the first things that we would want to say is we talk about abortion healing is to try not to say post-abortive and label an individual by a bad decision that they made, but instead recognizing the individual as a human being, just like you and I, that have had our own bad decisions of whatever they are and with an opportunity for for healing. That’s beautiful. So, you mentioned earlier about the “Who are the leaders?” We started with pregnancy centers, and pregnancy centers have a very, very unique opportunity for healing because men and women are coming to them to help them, either intercede for them to not have an abortion or to help them through their pregnancy. In both cases, those are men and women who have been impacted by abortion. So, healing may be a part of the services that can be provided by pregnancy centers. So that’s kind of an easy one. Then there are those then there are those that are in clergy. So that’s our churches. How often in our churches today are we avoiding that conversation because of the moral wrongness of the decision or the politicalness of that decision? We avoid abortion for those two reasons. Probably 99% of the time and not out of caring and warmth in any way, shape, or form. What we would like to see on the compassion scale is that not be afraid of having that conversation. For those that we hear that that are in the pews, that may be in the pews because, oh, by the way, once abortion comes into the equation, women aren’t going back to the church from which they came. And that’s really an important thing to keep in mind, as well. But but they’re leaving the pews often because they may have had an abortion and can’t listen to it, not because of its political or or otherwise religious sense. So we want to invite the conversation with the kind of language that invites healing and mercy and not justice and condemnation.
Scott Baier: So what I’m hearing Support After Abortion is not saying, “Hey, here’s our program and here’s what we’re going to deliver to you.” It’s actually going to what they are saying they need. So maybe speak about what the research is showing, what men and women who have had an abortion experience, abortion experience are saying that they want in a healing program.
Janine Marrone: I think one of the big surprises to me was what came out of the research. Well, it shouldn’t be a surprise because one of the things that I saw and by the way, my background is I’m Marketing Sales, Business Development. I’m used to looking at markets and trying to understand what makes them tick so that we can align ourselves with those particular markets. So I was really looking for, is this a marketing problem or a product market problem when I saw so many new that so many people had had abortions but they weren’t availing themselves to what was out there? One of the first things that we found out is that 95% of our programs, if not more, are faith based or start with a religious angle, if you will, whether they’re in retreat mode or they’re Bible studies and they are not necessarily done anonymously. And the two big things that came out was are women, at least in the women’s study, were not going to church. 80% of them seldom to never were going to church, and about 70% would prefer an anonymous programs. So we knew right away that the that the healing that we had was not necessarily I call that the product, the healing that providers that we had were not necessarily in alignment with where the women who wanted healing were.
Scott Baier: Yeah. Isn’t that the natural reaction? Because we as Catholics want to say Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, right? So we want to deliver that, but maybe that’s not yet right. We want to open the door. I think you’ve mentioned before a Saint Ignatius quote, That’s probably a good, good quote to remember here. Right?
Janine Marrone: In Ignatian spirituality, Saint Ignatius says be prepared to go through their door to bring them out through yours. And of course, we’re faith based and of course, we know what we believe. And one of the best ways for evangelization is to be attractive to someone. Number one, to form a conversation or a relationship that’s not judgmental, that’s that’s not self righteous. And I have to pause there because with someone with with with my intensity on my Catholicism, that’s the way I was. I really wanted to rush somebody into the confessional right away. Well, that is not necessarily the most attractive thing to suggest to anybody, let alone abortion. Right? So the first thing, of course, is to form that to be to be warm, to be inviting, to create a safe place and to maybe just be the the person that says, “I am sorry for your loss.” So meeting people where they are maybe an overused expression, but having somebody going through somebody’s doorway to bring them out through yours is another way of using something that was said 500 years ago. Is very appropriate for today.
Scott Baier: Planting that seed and not to say those other organizations aren’t doing great things. No, no, no. Maybe not yet. It’s a doorway to those programs.
Janine Marrone: And thank you for for defining that. This is not anything to say about what’s out there is not good. It’s wonderful and it works very, very well. But we have to be we have to be more options oriented. We need to understand, much like a physician, my classic is you wouldn’t go to a to a podiatrist for a toothache. Yeah, they might be able to help because I’m sure they are a physician. They might know something about it, but that is just not it’s it’s just not meeting the person to where their where their need is or where their hurt is. And everyone has a different temperament, a different desire, a different place on where they are in their path for healing. So we like to say there is no one size fits all, even though maybe if you’ve had an abortion and you found this one particular program to be the thing that worked for you, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for everybody. So there’s no one size fits all and there’s no one and done to healing. You might start in a place where you’re just talking to somebody. It’s not necessarily overly gospel oriented, if you will, and then you end up in a retreat back into the church from which you came. That is that’s the perfect sense of of path for healing.
Scott Baier: So someone might be planting a seed. Someone else will reap.
Janine Marrone: Will water it or fertilize it or.
Scott Baier: So it’s a, it’s a journey of healing that you might not be part of the whole way, but you might start off that conversation. So maybe before the break, let’s talk about what are those options that Support After Abortion is offering to people who are, again, healing from a or from an abortion experience.
Janine Marrone: And and it’s really kind of twofold. I mentioned the first one is for a client, for someone who has been impacted by abortion, man or woman would either reach us through our website or call us, and we do a bit of something called an intake, finding out where is that person on a variety of different questions and we either hold on to them for some period of time or we have a referral system where we vetted providers across the country, whether they’re locally done or maybe they’re done on Zoom or they’re done individually or they’re done in group or it’s Bible based or it’s not Bible based, we can make that referral. And then the second piece is that we deal with providers. So we have meetings on a monthly basis. We offer education on online. We work through organizations called Bright Course that have education through through the pregnancy centers. We have individuals that can do can provide marketing that might help. So we do the two things. One is client based, which is for the individual whose been impacted, and then those that are our providers who want to be providers. And then we do other things that help organizations and individuals spread messaging. So we have booklets and all kinds of collateral material that can be used, whether it’s at a at an abortion facility or the like. So that’s kind of a long answer to say it’s not just client based, nor is it just provider and future provider based, but it’s a combination so that we can back to the three C’s. We can not only collaborate, but we can build the capacity for those 22 million because I would imagine today, if there was an enlightenment about for those 22 million go now, where would they go? We don’t have that capacity to bring that amount of people into anything.
Scott Baier: This is exciting. Let’s pause there. And when we come back after the break, let’s maybe cover the forgotten father. Great. so don’t go away. We’ll be right back after this short break.
Episode 1 Part 2
Scott Baier: Welcome back to Life Matters. Again, we have with us Janine Marrone, who is a Board Chair and Founder of a great group called Support After Abortion. Janine, before the break, we talked about we mentioned briefly the forgotten father. As you said earlier, the victims of of abortion are the baby, of course, the mother. And so often we do forget about the father or we have certain ideas or stereotypes about the father, maybe speak about that.
Janine Marrone: Understanding about the father came and maybe the same way that the Support After Abortion has morphed from that ten years ago, that big epiphany on there was more than one victim or one casualty of an abortion. As we’ve gone along the way, the easy place to start is with women. And our culture focuses all on women. We’ve done a lot to masculinize men in our society and similarly in the abortion story as well as we were pursuing healing, we were hearing from men. So along the way, as we were doing this consumer research, we said, let’s let’s let’s research, let’s survey men and find out what what’s happening there. And we found out that half of the men didn’t believe that they had a voice in the abortion. Now, that is not what our society is telling us. We hear an awful lot about convert coercion and perhaps coercion does happen and we know it does. But we don’t necessarily think that half of the men involved in the parenting of this soon to be aborted child may not even know that that abortion is happening and are suffering in a very, very similar way. In fact, compared to women, women, men are more likely to seek out help and want help if it was available. Unfortunately, because they don’t believe that it is or they can’t find it, or in reality it isn’t available. The suffering happens. And we know with both men and women, unhealed abortions don’t lead to positive outcomes, right? The outcomes of addiction, relationship problems, all socio all kinds of social dysfunction, cycle of dysfunction, unemployment, underemployment, all kinds of not good things happen. Yeah. And with men as well as with women and men, we also hear about aggressive behavior. You know, sometimes when I’m on the road and I see that we all see aggressive drivers, I caution to say this, but I’m going to say it. I often wonder, I wonder if they have been impacted by abortion because we know one out of four women by the time they’re 45 and one out of five men. So the incidence level of abortion directly in men and women’s lives is real and unattended and is deadly.
Scott Baier: Yeah, someone once called that the shock waves of abortion. It’s not just the mother and father. There’s grandparents and uncles and nieces who don’t have their nephews.
Janine Marrone: The friend that took the woman to the abortion clinic, maybe even someone who counseled them in the regret over what that counsel was. The you’re right, the shock waves are just it’s it’s phenomenal.
Scott Baier: Yeah, there’s a lot there. So I’m sure in the future we’ll talk more about that. How about this issue of the changing landscape again, this world of chemical abortion, right. Medical or chemical abortion? It’s changing the landscape of how men and women are accessing abortion. Also, it’s changing the landscape of the trauma associated with it. Maybe speak about that.
Janine Marrone: You triggered a couple of different things. And I want to say this before I forget, but we we produced a white paper on the research that came from chemical abortion. And we included in that white paper a lot of the backstory and background on how long has it been and some and testimonials on on women who have had them. Chemical abortion has been around since the year 2000. And the curve of the propensity of chemical abortions looks something like this. So it was about 5% and somewhere around 2000 to if you even project the trend line, it should be somewhere around 80% by the end of this year. It’s just been on the uptick. Well, what is it? Yeah. So a chemical abortion is a series of pills that the woman takes that ultimately ends in the disposal the release, the abortion of the child in the home or the office. It’s the do it yourself version of what was previously happening in a clinic under anesthesia. So the landscape for abortion has. Radically changed where there’s a arm’s length really relationship and knowing what’s going on with it’s a surgical abortion. The individual becomes the abortionist herself. Yeah, the the aftermath of that. And I’m going to avoid the physical component of the aftermath of but the psychological, spiritual aftermath is much quicker than we’re seeing with with surgical abortion. So we’re hearing from women that are days past their abortion. So the the the impact of chemical abortion, you would never have imagined this some number of years ago. And the way our society is promoting it now with in with recklessly we’re we’re we’re more concerned with with how many aspirin or or or the like that people take than we are about what happens here. So that’s a that’s a big pause.
Scott Baier: And it shows the need even more so.
Janine Marrone: Correct, correct.
Scott Baier: Groups like Support After Abortion and others. Before we miss this opportunity, there are people out there who are saying, “Hey, where can I get more information?” So let’s talk about where they can access some of the resources we’ve already mentioned and others that we haven’t mentioned by Support After Abortion.
Janine Marrone: And I think you’ll see this on your screen, but help it support after abortion.com is the best place to go for online access or you can call 844-289-H-O-P-E which is 4673 and talk or text to someone.
Scott Baier: Okay, so there’s a hotline that someone could call right now that.
Janine Marrone: Correct, and we call it a hopeline. There is, there is. And we also hope that there are people that are listening to us that want to learn more about abortion and its impact. And they can go they can read the white papers or maybe you are interested in volunteering or you want to do more to understand what you how better you can arm yourself with language and and compassion techniques. I used to say call compassionate technique, but learning some of the ways to be warmer in how you communicate or how you can teach others to communicate. And those people, I strongly encourage you to go to the website and, and perhaps sign up for a webinar or two or be part of our provider meetings, which we have every month. Lots of ways to enrich your knowledge on this subject and spread the news of compassion and mercy on the topic. There are many ways to get in the way of abortion and from our perspective, healing or ending the demand for abortion by healing those that have been impacted helps to get to those that are the repeat abortions.
Scott Baier: That’s a great mission. That’s your mission statement, right? And if you think about a nation or a world of people who are equipped with the language and with the compassion and the resources, I truly believe we can end abortion. So in our remaining minutes, let’s go here. I want to give you the opportunity to look right at the camera, okay. Because we know if there’s a million abortions this year in America alone, there are a number of people who are watching this who may be, again, directly or indirectly impacted by abortion. So I want you to speak to them and you can say whatever comes to your heart.
Janine Marrone: Well, the first thing and I can speak for myself, it’s check your motives. When you learn about someone or even if you’re going to an abortion clinic, remember, remember that, that the people that are there have been impacted directly by abortion. So check your motives and and invite in this case, I’m going to say invite the Lord into your heart to say, help me understand. Help me be compassionate. Help me be warm. Help me be loving. So so checking your motives and certainly judgementalism or self righteousness or or anything that that is overly religious as it relates to a to to someone may not be where they are. So thinking about where they may be in their spiritual journey. And then obviously if you’re talking to somebody being empathetic about someone’s loss, we don’t allow women and men who have had abortions to grieve, for that matter, all reproductive loss and all through miscarriage. And that as well, saying I am so sorry for your loss and that you are not alone is goes miles to healing. And you may be the first person that this individual has told about their abortion experience then after. Ask if they’d like some kind of help. And then you can refer to to our number or maybe not say anything at all. Number three And number four can easily be silence and let the person tell their story. So it could be asking and I probably should have said that first. Ask them if they’d like to talk about it and share their story. nNd then if not, certainly silence or if you want to talk about it in the future, you certainly can or I can refer you someplace is another opportunity. But not being really quick to having to be the one who does it all. If indeed we as a society could be as a church group, as a as a civic association, as a as a as a parent, as for some or just an aunt or an uncle. If we can just be more inviting to allow those in our family and those that we that we deal with to to talk about their hurt and their woundedness, we go a long way to inviting, healing and then making having that person go on to the next steps in their lives, which ultimately can lead to that healing from abortion and then also not being afraid. Again, we talked about that earlier. Like Saint Ignatius said, go through their door to bring them out through yours. All of us that have fallen away, relatives from the faith can can learn from that same bit of of advice is is being more inviting about who we are and how we love and how we care is the largest step in getting men and women, whether they’re impacted by abortion or anything else, to to take that next step in their journey to what’s ultimately going to lead them closer to the Lord.
Scott Baier: Janine, thank you so much for not only sharing this powerful message, but your pioneering work in this world of Support After Abortion. It’s really powerful. And I just thank you so much for sharing it with us today.
Janine Marrone: Thanks, Scott.
Scott Baier: Friends, I’m so glad you joined us today. I’m going to encourage you to go to the website support after abortion.com. And again, if you’re looking for resources to help someone else or if you’re in need yourself, it’s a great place to start the healing journey. You know, as I was thinking when Janine was talking, Christ is he has come to us to heal the broken hearted. And as Scripture tells us, to set the captives free and no matter what our trauma might be, Christ is present. He’s ready to be part of that healing, to heal us. We just have to come to him. And so I’m going to encourage you not to make him wait too long. Thank you so much for being with us today, and I look forward to seeing you next time. And remember, you are loved.
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