Thank you to the wonderful volunteers from the Frassati Newman Group and the Young Adults from St. John and Holy Family for beautifying the Next Step flower beds for Spring. Also thank you to Board members Marilyn, Byron, and Julianna and kids Scarlett and Chloe!

Recently I saw a comment and discussion making the rounds on social media that caught my eye. I try very hard not to get sucked into “conversations” with strangers on the internet or to allow myself to react to foolish people. And I did not engage here either but I did read the post and the subsequent comments. I wanted to share with you what I concluded. 

The gist of the post (which originated from Lila Rose, President and Founder of LiveAction, a pro-life organization) was on the morality of offering someone congratulations on a pregnancy which occurred out of wedlock. I paused here because it landed very close to home. Not only in my work at Next Step but in my own personal story. 

My first child was born out of wedlock. I was not married to her father nor was I necessarily planning to marry him any time soon.  At the time he was unfortunately trapped by addiction (and still is to my knowledge). You might ask, well why be with someone who is clearly not capable of being in a committed relationship let alone being a father? Good question. Well, I have no answer other than I was young, naive, and wholly without a realistic view on love, marriage, or responsibility. 

When I found out I was pregnant I was understandably terrified. I was raised in a good Catholic home and my parents were good people (still are!). How could I face them with this? I had been completely and utterly irresponsible. The first person I told however was not my parents, nor my on again off again boyfriend but a priest whom I knew from the church we attended. He also ran the young adult Catholic group I’d been circling. It was as the group was walking out of a local dive in Renton following a rousing conversation that I dropped my huge news on his lap. He smiled, nodded, and said – “Oh. What a blessing.” And that was that. 

I talked to my mother next and then my father. They expressed their joy at the prospect of a child. They gently chided me and “wished it were under different circumstances”. But then they leaned into it. And I leaned into them. 

A baby is always a blessing no matter how he or she came into our world. Every person was placed here on earth on purpose for a purpose. 

Back to the original post. At Next Step every day young women come in that have a child or are pregnant. And sometimes they come alone though many times the father of the baby is with her though they are unmarried. As a professed Christian sex outside of marriage is not the path God shaped for any of us. And that road is not what Next Step promotes or hopes for. But we meet every woman no matter what. No matter why. No matter her past or current circumstances because we are called to love. 

My baby is turning 25 this year. She was a surprise and a delight. Things were not easy and not smooth. The road ahead was often obscured. But I’ve never forgotten the gentle acknowledgement and encouragement I was surrounded by at my news. It shaped such a large part of what came after, not just as a mother, but as a person. Had I been shunned, or rebuked by my parents and loved ones, I’m 100% sure I would not be here today. Or here in happiness and commitment anyway. And that is what we work hard to offer at Next Step. Acknowledgment, Encouragement. Education. Rest. Truth. 

Thank you for continuing to help Next Step thrive. 

~ Heather Vasquez

It has been just over 40 years since our 40th President,
Ronald Wilson Reagan, issued the proclamation (found a little further in this post.) It deserves another read!

Reagan’s decree is as true now as it was then. Other than, sadly, the number of abortions is wholly more vast now than it was in 1984. However, we still count among the many positive strides our nation has made towards protecting human life, this proclamation as significant and it continues to be celebrated and exemplified
in our families and churches each year. 

Before Reagan’s proclamation please see the link to the story of Emily and her mother from Catholic All Year (catholicallyear.com) from June of 2022. I encourage you to read the brief story titled “A Story of Teen Pregnancy, Grandparents’ Prayers, and Me.” It really touched on the way pregnancy, abortion, and motherhood affect so many lives in so many ways and remain a part of a family’s history. 

Declaration for Life-
“The values and freedoms we cherish as Americans rest on our fundamental commitment to the sanctity of human life……The first of the “unalienable rights” affirmed by our Declaration of Independence is the right to life itself, a right the Declaration states has been endowed by our Creator on all human beings — whether young or old, weak or strong, healthy or handicapped.

Since 1973, however, more than 15 million unborn children have died in legalized abortions — a tragedy of stunning dimensions that stands in sad contrast to our belief that each life is sacred. These children, over tenfold the number of Americans lost in all our Nation’s wars, will never laugh, never sing, never experience the joy of human love; nor will they strive to heal the sick, or feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights, and we are infinitely poorer for their loss.

We are poorer not simply for lives not led and for contributions not made, but also for the erosion of our sense of the worth and dignity of every individual. To diminish the value of one category of human life is to diminish us all. Slavery, which treated Blacks as something less than human, to be bought and sold if convenient, cheapened human life and mocked our dedication to the freedom and equality of all men and women. Can we say that abortion — which treats the unborn as something less than human, to be destroyed if convenient — will be less corrosive to the values we hold dear?

We have been given the precious gift of human life, made more precious still by our births in our pilgrimages to a land of freedom. It is fitting, then, on the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that struck down State anti-abortion laws, that we reflect anew on these blessings, and on our corresponding responsibility to guard with care the lives and freedoms of even the weakest of our fellow human beings.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Sunday, January 22, 1984, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life, and to reaffirm our commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of each human life.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 13th day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America
the two hundred and eighth.”

~ Ronald Reagan

As we edge ever closer to celebrating with family and friends around the  dinner table and give thanks for our health, our family, our homes, our delicious meal, and our country (as I will be) I pray that each of us, in some small way, keeps in the back of our hearts, those that are perhaps not celebrating. Those who may be or feel alone and question what there is to be thankful for. 

Late last year Next Step Pregnancy Services began offering Abortion Pill  Reversal (APR) services. This is a process sought out when a woman takes the first of two pills to end her pregnancy and realizes she has made a terrible mistake. Can she go back? In some cases, many in fact, yes, she can. That’s where Next Step comes in.

These services include tangible support, a prescription medication of progesterone (a natural hormone produced during pregnancy that nourishes baby), and ultrasounds to check on pregnancy progress. It is a bright beacon of hope. The brightest. While we are so very blessed to have this service to offer like any medical process there are no guarantees. And while there have been successes, 68% success rate in fact, not every story ends that way. I would like to share one of those.

This past year a woman found us and was en route driving to us (~ 2 hour drive) even before confirming we could help her. She was in the military and felt pressure to take the abortion pill from not only the father of the baby but her coworkers as well. Her one friend helped her find us to see if there was a chance to save her baby.
She had gotten the pill online and never had an ultrasound done. We didn’t know the exact age of baby – possibly 7 or 8 weeks? She was in her late 30s and had never been pregnant. She was horrified she may have ruined her only chance at having a baby.

Sadly, it was a long drive home for this woman. We could not tell her she had a viable pregnancy. But we could tell her she was no longer pregnant – she had likely miscarried earlier in her pregnancy – about 2 weeks prior. We provided as much tangible and emotional support as we could.
“At least I don’t have to live knowing I killed my baby.”
While this story still ends on a sad note – I am very thankful we could give this little bit of comfort. 

Because please know, the very real emotional trauma and heartbrokenness of knowing you caused the death of your unborn child can never be undone. Forgiven yes! But not forgotten, Although in her case her baby was still lost. She was not. Not to the trauma of abortion.
Being able to be with her during this time, to hold her, to listen to her, to know her and let her know we saw her was Christ’s work and Will expressed and shared.  Thank you for your continual support. We are so very thankful for each and every one of you. Have a blessed Thanksgiving.

“If you’re going to pray for potatoes, you should have a hoe in your hand.”
In that way we must be like those in Nehemiah’s time who “did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other” (Nehemiah 4:17).

As we enter into the last few days before what folks are calling the “most important election of our lifetime,” (Christianity Today, 07/26/2024, K. Schiess) I happen to come across what is considered one of the most important speeches given in the last century, spoken on October 27th, 1964 just ahead of the Presidential campaign of Goldwater and Johnson. It was given by actor turned public speaker and later our 40th President, Ronald Reagan. It is a very lengthy but highly effective speech now and when it was given 60 years ago. But it was the last bit that stood out to me as not only profound but extremely relevant in 2024. 

The address touches on many things but the most important was about our freedoms. And our responsibilities in upholding those freedoms. When Reagan delivered this keynote there was a lot of fear and uncertainty surrounding the current US relations with the Soviet Union. But we can easily replace certain words and ideas to fit wholly into our current moral ideologies.

Thank you for your continued support for Next Step Pregnancy Services and its many clients, client families, and stories. Informed consent is freedom. Advocacy for the unborn is empowerment. Protecting those who are most vulnerable is our charge as Christians.  

Here is an excerpt. 

“Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy “accommodation.” And they say if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer – not an easy answer but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the [bomb] (or imprisonment for daring to pray for and defend our fellow brothers and sisters in the womb)  by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain,(or in the womb)  “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.” 

Alexander Hamilton said, “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” 

Now let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace – and you can have it in the next second – surrender.

Admittedly, there’s a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face, that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand, the ultimatum. And what then?

Someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. [He] believes this because from our side [he’s] heard voices pleading for “peace at any price” or as one commentator put it, he’d rather “live on his knees than die on his feet.” And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin – just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world?
The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it’s a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point beyond which they must not advance.

” Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits – not animals.” And he said, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
He (our Lord) has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny. Thank you very much.”