Faith and Family Values

Sharing Hope, Saving Lives

The Psalm 139 Project Opening a Window to the Womb

by Lee Weeks

As executive director of Central Texas LifeCare, Terry Williams has a standing appointment each Tuesday and Thursday with the Creator of the universe. That’s when her pregnancy resource center conducts sonograms for women facing untimely or unwanted pregnancies.

“We can use our ultrasound machine to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s not just a blob of tissue, but that this is a life,” Williams says. “When that heart is beating and you can hear it, that’s God talking.”

And statistics show that most pregnant women who visit the San Marcos, Texas, center, near Austin, are getting the message. Williams says 92 percent of the women who see a sonogram of their unborn child at her center choose life for their baby instead of abortion.

“The ultrasound is what God is using at this time to save lives and to change hearts and minds,” Williams says. She estimates that hundreds of lives have been saved since December 2004, when her center began using an ultrasound machine provided by the Psalm 139 Project.

The Psalm 139 Project, administered by the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, exists to promote an awareness of the importance of ultrasound technology in crisis pregnancy situations and to provide a way for financial donors to contribute to a fund that places ultrasound machines in qualified pregnancy resource centers.

“If wombs had windows, people would be much more reticent to abort babies...” Richard Land

“If wombs had windows, people would be much more reticent to abort babies because they would be forced to confront the evident humanity of the baby from early gestation onward,” ERLC President Richard Land said, noting sonograms provide a “window into the womb.”

“Pregnant mothers who see their babies on sonograms are far more likely to carry their baby to term,” Land continued. “These ultrasound machines save babies’ lives.”

Medical research on human development has proven that a person’s complete genetic code is established at conception. An unborn baby’s heart begins to beat eighteen days after conception, and her fingerprints are completely established during the fourth week of development. She sucks her thumb seven weeks after conception; and between nine and ten weeks, a baby squints, swallows, and moves her tongue.

In a culture where abortion ends the lives of more than 1.3 million unborn American children every year, or one out of four pregnancies, Williams says an ultrasound machine is a powerful tool in defending the sanctity of human life.

January 2007 marks the thirty-fourth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. Since the ruling, more than 40 million babies have lost their lives to abortion.

Williams says the impact a sonogram can have on a mother is undeniable. She recounted the response of an unwed twenty-year-old mother upon seeing the sonogram of her eight-week-old unborn child: “Oh, no. Now that I’ve seen it, I’ve got to have this baby.”

Central Texas LifeCare, which also provides testing for sexually transmitted diseases as well as life skills counseling on parenting, sex education, sexual purity, and abstinence, serves about seventy-five clients each month. About half of the center’s clients receive positive pregnancy tests.

About 65 percent of the center’s clients are women ages nineteen to twenty-five, the “most abortion vulnerable group of women in the United States,” Williams adds. Girls ages fifteen to eighteen make up about 35 percent of the clientele.

“I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful...” Psalm 139:14

Williams says she believes it’s providential that Central Texas LifeCare is located near Texas State University. The majority of the center’s clientele come from the 28,000-student campus. Williams visits the university campus at least three times each year to offer sex education and abstinence counseling and promote the center’s array of services. The center also receives about five counseling referrals each week from the county health department.

In an increasingly sexually promiscuous society that devalues human life by endorsing abortion as simply another legal birth control option, Williams says every pregnancy resource center needs an ultrasound machine to protect the unborn.

Studies, however, show that only 10 percent to 30 percent of pregnancy resource centers across the United States have access to ultrasound technology and a trained operator.

Williams, who has served as executive director of Central Texas LifeCare for four years, is joined by a nurse and licensed sonographer, who administers the ultrasound for expectant mothers.

“We’ll all be in there to watch the ultrasound,” Williams says. “We’ll be able to witness life. It’s one more way that we can connect with the mother.” The boyfriend, husband, or other family members are welcome to observe the sonogram as well.

Williams says her dedicated staff care as much for the mother and her family as the unborn child. Consequently, about thirty clients made professions of faith in Christ in 2006. “They want to live the lifestyle they see modeled by the Christ-followers who make up our staff,” she says.

One hundred percent of financial contributions donated to the ERLC’s Psalm 139 Project goes to evangelistically-oriented centers. Tax-deductible gifts to the Psalm 139 Project may be made c/o ERLC, 901 Commerce Street, Nashville, TN, 37203.

For more information about the value of ultrasound technology in crisis pregnancy situations and how you can help place sonogram machines in pregnancy resource centers, visit psalm139project.org.

“When that heart is beating and you can hear it, that's God talking.” Terry Williams, Executive Director of Central Texas LifeCare

Lee Weeks is the associate pastor of evangelism and missions at First Baptist Church, Cumming, Georgia.

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