NAPLES, Florida (LifeSiteNews) – Florida’s largest network of pro-life pregnancy centers is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Community Pregnancy Clinics (CPCI) started in Naples as one of the 13 original crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. It began in 1974 as Emergency Pregnancy Service (ESP), reaching out to abortion-minded women via the Naples Daily News. In 1984, the growing organization moved next to a Planned Parenthood.
ESP changed its name to Collier Pregnancy Center in 2000 and opened its first satellite clinic in Fort Myers in 2007, finally becoming Community Pregnancy Clinics (CPCI).
It has grown to five medical clinics and two mobile medical clinics that have helped 23,000 moms choose life.
In 2023 alone, CPCI saved 1,552 babies from abortion.
“The demand for our services is increasing,” CPCI CEO Scott Baier told LifeSiteNews.
CPCI added a 24/7 nurse chat line to its website, increased the hours it’s open, and has ramped up its digital marketing efforts. It also added a Patient and Volunteer Coordinator who calls all clients after an appointment is made online and before they arrive at the clinic to establish a pre-appointment relationship.
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Florida has become something of an abortion destination in the American south. The Florida Supreme Court is expected to soon rule on the future of a law limiting abortions after 15 weeks and whether Floridians will vote on a pro-abortion ballot initiative in November. If the Florida Supreme Court rules that the 15-week law can go into effect, then a heartbeat law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis will also be able to go into effect 30 days later.
The heartbeat law going into effect would “serve to speed up the process for women in an unexpected pregnancy which makes it even more urgent for us to reach women first with our life-saving information,” Baier said. “This is why we are taking further steps to increase our digital marketing efforts and investing heavily to reach them first. Also, due to the exceptions in the six-week ban, and the prevalence of the chemical abortion pill, our services are needed more than ever in this post-Roe world.”
“The biggest obstacles families who come to us face is a lack of understanding of the resources that are available to them,” said Baier, pointing to statistics that show 60 percent of women nationally say they would have rejected abortion if they’d had more emotional and financial support.
CPCI offers women free lab-quality pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD testing, and material assistance. That material assistance includes three years of “gifted necessities” after the baby is born. CPCI also helps moms with “educational and training opportunities, and an opportunity to be matched up with a client mentor who will be available to them. In addition, we then connect them with local resources that are available to them including further counseling services and other assistance programs.”
Addressing root causes of abortion
In addition to the ample free care they provide women, CPCI seeks to address the root causes of abortion, which Baier described as “a lack of healthy choices surrounding the issue of sexual morality and integrity.”
Through its S.H.A.R.E. (Sexual Health and Relationship Education) program, started in 2014, CPCI seeks to reach young people before they are in a crisis situation and prevent “an increase in toxic relationships, unplanned pregnancies, and abortions.” The organization’s main S.H.A.R.E. speaker, Pam Stenzel, “will be training young adults around the state to go into middle and high schools, and college campuses to deliver talks on sexual integrity and human development.”
CPCI’s mission is “to help end abortion – one mother, one father, one baby at a time,” Baier wrote in a recent letter.
“The measure of CPCI’s success over 50 years can be found in the stories of the lives we have touched: of moms who already had kids and didn’t think they could handle one more; of women who were touched by the supportive words of a nurse counselor; of a young mother who took the abortion pill reversal and saved her baby’s life; of teens who saw ultrasound images of their babies and knew it was much more than a clump of cells; and of women in abusive relationships who accepted CPCI’s help to start a new chapter in life,” he wrote. CPCI is “more integral than ever, serving roughly 5,000 women each year while remaining committed to providing compassionate care and options to families in Florida.”
CPCI’s 50th anniversary gala is April 6 at the Ritz-Carlton Naples, Tiburón. It begins with a reception at 5 p.m. The program is emceed by actress Sam Sorbo. Its featured speaker is conservative commentator Michael Knowles. The event is a “celebration of the lives saved from abortion and the generosity of those who make our work possible,” CPCI says on its gala site.
Tickets can be purchased HERE.
“We are the happiest group of people I have ever met because every day we show up at work, we show up at our board meetings, and we hear about the babies that are now present in our world because their moms chose life,” CPCI board member Constance M. Burke said in a video about last year’s gala.
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