On the mothers’ side

The Pro-Life Forum the largest pro-life and pro-family platform in Slovakia – that brings together 49 non-governmental organizations involved in the protection of human life and human dignity, from the moment of conception until natural death – is launching one of its most important campaigns titled “March 25 – Day of the Conceived child”. In addition to the dimension of education and formation across various levels of society in the field of the protection of the life of the newborn, efforts are being made to raise public attention on a project that will provide concrete help to women with unplanned pregnancies and to the mothers with children in need. Danka Jaceckova has interviewed for SIR Europe Zuzana Stohlova Kinova, director of Alexis consultancy service, which is part of the Pro-Life Forum. Activists supporting “freedom of choice” often criticise pro-life initiatives, claiming that in addition to violating women’s rights, these actions are only theoretical and fail to provide practical solutions to women in situations of difficulty. What is the situation in Slovakia? “This question must be seen in its twofold dimension. The first is, as you mentioned yourself, that activists claim that our action is ‘against women’s rights’. In my opinion we should start talking about responsibility. We should admit that many unexpected or unwanted pregnancies are the result of an excessively free lifestyle and that many women use abortion as a sort of contraceptive measure, without worrying too much about the life and health of their child, nor about their own health. We do not judge, and our help is addressed to everyone, but I think that people should stop being selfish and stop viewing conceived children as insignificant beings with no rights. It should be realized that also an embryo conceived a few weeks before is a human being with undeniable dignity. Another dimension you have mentioned is that of providing concrete help to pregnant women and young girls in difficulty, or mothers in situations of need. This is the area where I had the opportunity to work for over five years, cooperating in two beautiful projects: the Alexis Counselling Service and Let’s save lives. The first offers consultancy services in difficult life situations. We have a wide network of experts in the areas of medicine, psychology and law, who help us handle these situations thanks to their sensitivity and expertise. The project Let’s save lives provides these women with concrete financial support and places where they can live, in specialized structures or institutions, if they have nowhere to stay or if they are victims of domestic violence”. Let’s start with the Alexis consultancy service. Could you give us some concrete figures and some examples of the problems and the situations you help to solve? “We frequently are the first-contact institution. Young and adult women who seek our help are often scared and insecure. Our staff members and collaborators are aware of the importance of addressing their concerns in the appropriate way. We started this work in 2009. Since then we have offered our consultancy services in 731 cases. Most of them were unexpected pregnancies of very young women or serious forms of post-abortion syndrome. It could be surprising, but there have also been people who contacted us for a problem with their partner or with their wife who was considering the possibility of undergoing an abortion and they didn’t agree with that decision and asked us to help them save the life of the conceived child. There have been cases of women with very young children, some of them pregnant, who were abandoned by their partners, or who were victims of domestic violence. In these situations our consultancy is not sufficient and it is necessary to put them in contact with institutions that can give them concrete help”. Does this include also the Let’s Save Lives project? “Exactly: when the problem can no longer be solved only through the consultancy of experts we suggest to the person interested to enter the Let’s Save Lives project that encompasses concrete support programs with financial aid, protection, lodging, ensuring basic necessities, in most cases for a one-year period. I wish to thank all those who support us through their donations, since this is the only source of funding of our activities. Since our project was first implemented in 2008 we have collected almost 220thousand euro. The entire amount was distributed among pregnant women and to the mothers with children in difficult situations. In this way we were able to help 105 women and 87 beautiful children were born. Some of their pictures can be seen on the website www.zachranmezivoty.sk. We also receive the moral and practical support of the Slovakian Bishops’ Conference to whom we are very grateful. Every human life is worth being saved, and even though we totally respect personal freedom as well as the privacy of the women we help, each one of those lives is impressed in our hearts in a special way”.