Dr. Marc Newman has worked with pregnancy centers since the late 1980s — first through the Pro-Life Speaker Seminar, then thirty years of banquet and fundraising work, and now Contend for Life seminars equipping pastors and lay leaders across the country.
So when Scott Klusendorf asks him what a pregnancy center is for, the answer carries some weight:
"The primary goal of pregnancy resource centers is singular. It's to save children who are at risk from abortion. That is what they exist to do."
Klusendorf frames two distractions pulling at these organizations right now. From the left, the push to shift from pro-life to pro-abundant life — fatherhood initiatives, family formation, discipleship, church integration, and a list he says would overwhelm Superman. From the right, equal protection groups arguing that centers failing to back their legislation are failing in their duty to serve God and save children.
Newman's answer is more nuanced than the headline suggests. He defends STI testing, where a center reaches people it knows are sexually active and can preempt an unintended pregnancy entirely. He defends fatherhood work, on the grounds that what the father says is often the single biggest factor in whether a woman aborts. He defends handing a new believer off to a group like Amy Ford's Embrace Grace so a local church can disciple her — because the center doesn't have the resources to do that itself, and coordination gets the benefit without diluting the mission.
The condition is the same in every case: don't take your eye off the ball. The person at risk of being intentionally killed is the unborn child.
Dr. Marc Newman is the author of "Pivot", a strategy for the pro-life movement in post-Roe America.
Watch the full conversation: https://youtu.be/z309dJWrwlo
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