MISSION — After the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, one nonprofit group decided to push up their opening date, believing their services would be needed more than ever. But their services won’t focus on reproductive health or abortion resources. Instead it will try to convince women to not seek an abortion elsewhere and navigate their unplanned pregnancy.
In the heart of Mission, Audrey Jo Muñoz is preparing for the opening of Jo-Nic Bloom, a faith-based nonprofit organization that aims to counsel pregnant individuals through the word of God. However, Muñoz is adamant that they’re a judgment-free zone that is open to everyone.
“This is a pro-life organization but regardless of where they stand, we are opening up our door,” said Muñoz, the founder of the nonprofit. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, we’re here to impart biblical truth but at the end of the day, that’s between God and them.”
Their pregnancy and wellness studio will offer pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and faith-based counseling for pregnancies, divorce or other difficult situations.
The facility will have two coaching and discipleship classrooms, three consultation rooms, and a sonogram room. They will also have a boutique with free clothes for the mother and the baby, access to computers, Wi-Fi and printers, and a coffee bar.
Their services will be free of charge but are currently seeking financial assistance from the community to help them get up and running.
Just past the lobby, at the entrance to their main hallway, hangs a bell that Muñoz says they will ring for “any salvations that occur.”
Muñoz explained that if a pregnant woman comes in who was contemplating an abortion, they will first confirm that she’s pregnant.
“The hope is she’ll also have the sonogram,” she said, “and then through the conversation, through the consultation with the Bloom Coaches, if the conversation lends itself to talk about Jesus Christ and the biblical truth and she decides to give her life to him, we’ll do the prayer of salvation and then we will ring the bell in her honor.”
CONCERNS
Muñoz is very open about the fact that Jo-Nic Studio is a faith-based organization that hopes to dissuade people from obtaining abortions which is not the case for all crisis pregnancy centers.
Dr. Stephanie Mischell, a family medicine physician in Dallas, says that while she’s not familiar with Jo-Nic Bloom specifically, she’s had a lot of experience with patients going to crisis pregnancy centers and says she finds them to be harmful to patients.
“These organizations exist primarily to convince people not to have abortions and have been known to go to really drastic measures to do so, including providing false or misleading information,” said Mischell, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health.
“I have had many patients who go to pregnancy centers under the impression that they are able to access abortion care or that they’ll actually discuss that as an option only to find that that’s not the case,” she said.
In those experiences Mischell said care was delayed because a crisis pregnancy center told patients that they had to wait to access services like a dating ultrasound, or they received incorrect information about their own pregnancy and especially receive incorrect information about abortion as an option.
“When I hear that this type of organization is popping up, it’s hard for me to trust that they’re actually going to be providing care to patients,” she said. “Regardless of what you personally believe about abortion, I think it’s just unconscionable to lie or mislead somebody about their own health or their own pregnancy.”
And even though Jo-Nic Bloom is clear about their intentions to dissuade people from abortions, Mischell said she believes there’s still potential for harm, especially because they’re not beholden to the same standard of care that medical professionals are.
Mischell also pointed out that people seek out abortions for different types of reasons whether it be because their health is at risk, because their mental health is at risk, financial reasons, or it’s just the right option for them.
“And while, certainly I would want any person who is pregnant to have access to the resources to have a healthy pregnancy, even if every pregnant person had access to health care, had access to things to take care of a newborn — all of those sort of things that we really don’t have, especially in Texas — there would still be need for abortions,” Mischell said.
“There’s no amount of services that can replace (abortions) that isn’t still forcing someone to carry a pregnancy to term,” she said.
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
Despite having lost the battle for abortion rights in the courts, pro-abortion groups were still hard at work providing what resources they could to people in need.
Volunteers working with South Texans for Reproductive Justice spent a few hours one recent Saturday preparing care packages that will be shipped for free to anyone who requests them.
They were filled with one dose of emergency contraception, three condoms, two packs of lubricant, two pregnancy tests, and a resource kit that carries information on abortion, consent and other resources, according to Melissa Arjona, founder of STRJ.
The group prepared packages during the “packing party” in preparation for increased demand that they’ve experienced since the Supreme Court decision.
“We’ve been having them more frequently since SB 8,” said Noemi Pratt, board secretary for STRJ, referring to the state law that banned abortions after approximately six weeks of pregnancy which went into effect in September.
“The first week after Roe v. Wade was overturned, we shipped out about 618 packages and this week, which is the second week, we got another 93 requests,” she said. “We definitely are seeing people wanting to have Plan B at home already ready just in case, so that’s just another preventative to try and not get pregnant.”
This year, they’ve already shipped about 5,800 packages. All of last year, they shipped about 2,000.
People can request a package through a link posted on the organization’s Instagram page.
OPEN DOORS
Muñoz said one of the reasons she was inspired to open her pregnancy studio is because she’d found herself with an unexpected pregnancy before that led to an abortion.
“I went through this, (an) unplanned pregnancy when I was in my teens,” she said. “Nobody pointed me to biblical truth.”
“They all said, ‘You have a good life ahead of you; why do you want to have this baby, you’re never going to finish college,’” she continued. “Through all these stages, no one ever said, ‘But let me just tell you biblical truth.’”
She says now she has to live with the thought that if only someone had pointed her to the word of God, things could have been different.
“But God works everything out for good so if we can be the place that just provides biblical truth … we’re not God so if she chooses otherwise, that’s between her and God,” Muñoz said, “but we’ve done our part.”
But if a person chooses to have an abortion and they need grief counseling afterward, Muñoz said their doors will be open to them too through what they call “Bloom by His Grace Curriculum.”
For people who are considering an abortion because they don’t have the resources to care for a child, she said they would first try to make sure that the pregnant person is in a safe environment and has emotional support.
They’d also reach out to the community if she needs housing and to try to partner with the community to make sure she’s safe and has a safe place to live, Muñoz said, adding they’d try to get them rental assistance and help them sign up for Medicaid benefits.
“We don’t, per se, state that we have all the answers but we know we serve a good God and with the assistance of the community, we’re going to figure it out,” she said.
She said her main concern is that there is a misconception about what it means to be pro-life which, to her, means being about all life, not just the baby’s life.
“We’re here (so) that when mom walks through the door, she’s our priority. Baby’s second,” she said. “There’s a misconception that we are going to condemn her and that we’re going to point the finger at her and I worry that that could hinder women coming in.”
PRECAUTIONS
The pregnancy studio is currently scheduled to open its doors in August but its total number of staff is still unclear and depends on how much money it’s able to raise from the community.
Jo-Nic Bloom is affiliated with Friends of the Great Commission, a 501(c)(3) that provides donation, administrative, bookkeeping and compliance services to agents conducting ministry work.
Though the new nonprofit will ultimately leave the decision of whether to get an abortion up to the individual, Mischell suggested a few ways individuals can protect themselves from being misled by crisis pregnancy centers in general.
“One is really asking point blank questions such as ‘Do you provide abortion services? Do you provide abortion referrals? What are the qualifications of the person providing this ultrasound?” Mischell said. “It’s asking really direct questions so that people can’t maneuver out of answering them and to be wary if people aren’t giving you direct answers.”
“There’s also a website called CrisisPregnancyCenterMap.com where people investigate different organizations and try to get a sense of whether or not they’re providing genuine care over there at the crisis pregnancy center,” she said. “So looking at things like that could be potentially helpful.”
Mischell said that in a newer place like Nic-Bloom, with whom she reiterated she is not familiar and does not know their practices, it could take some time to really know whether they provide genuine care. Regardless, she cautioned patients should know who they’re speaking to, what their background is, and have a point blank list of the types of services that are provided.
With the ban on abortion now in effect in Texas, another possible concern among people who are considering an abortion is the sharing of private information such as their menstruation or other information that could be indicative of their pregnancy status.
Muñoz, though, assured that privacy was among their highest priorities and reiterated they wouldn’t judge anyone who sought their help.
“First and foremost, we care about mom; we want to make sure that she’s comfortable, that she’s safe,” Muñoz said. “We’re judgment free. If she doesn’t want to talk about Jesus, we don’t have to talk about Jesus. She’s going to help direct that conversation in a loving way and, again, we don’t judge here.”
“We can only give her biblical truth, tell her what’s available in the community, how we can help her, what her options are,” Muñoz added. “She ultimately makes that decision herself and we support her and love her regardless.”
