Another "Not at this time" letter
It happened again. We got another one of those "reject letters."
For the second year in a row a major Pro-life organization, which hosts an annual national conference, informed TMCInternational that they were not interested in us teaching a workshop entitled "Helping Clients Get Off of Welfare." The reason this particular rejection hurts so bad is because for the second year in a row this same organization contacted us asking us if we were interested in teaching a workshop!
I attended this organization's conference in 2011 and read their conference catalog's list of workshop options. There were all types of workshops on sexual purity, fundraising options and post-abortion counseling, even more workshops dealing with parenting classes curriculum and how to find effective board members. Unfortunately, there were no workshops dealing with such topics as: How to mentor a teen mother or How to help a teen mother get back to high school.
I understand that not every Pro-life organization is called to work with teen mothers. Many Pro-life organizations are called to fight the evils of abortion and believe me, that's a good fight! However, if we are going to continue calling ourselves "Pro-Life" than we better be just as concerned about the baby's quality of life OUTSIDE of the womb as we are about its safety inside the womb!
Besides noticing its lack of workshops dealing with post-pregnancy issues, I noticed something else at last year's conference. During the course of the conference many individuals came to the TMCInternational exhibit booth making statements like, "This program is EXACTLY what our community needs!" of "I, so wish our Pregnancy Care Center had a program like this!" or " I'm so tired of seeing the same teen moms coming back year after year with yet another pregnancy. I wish we could help a pregnant teen AFTER she gives birth."
People working or volunteering in Pregnancy Care Centers often see the need for follow-up programs like the one TMCInternational has to offer. Why can't the people in charge of the overseeing organizations see the need to provide their people with that type of training? Or at least provide them with a workshop or two at their national conferences?