Crisis pregnancy is a life experience like no other. It shakes us to our core. It can make us do things that we wouldn’t normally do. It can make us feel ashamed of who we are as people. Whatever we choose in that crisis, it can isolate us and drive us to hate ourselves. In Zoe Community, some of us have experienced crisis pregnancy and some have not. We all know women who have gone through it, though, and have witnessed how they handled the shame placed upon them by society.

Shame.

That one tiny word has given us all a great deal of grief. Some would call shame a necessity to make us do the right thing. What it really has been is a tool we use to dominate one another. It has walked hand-in-hand with fear to be the driving force behind some of our most regrettable decisions in life. We have altered ourselves to fit in with what society deems acceptable and we, alone, have paid the price.

But, what if things were different? What if shame could be set in its place and stripped of its power? What if we did not use shame as a tool to control one another but, instead, understood our own brokenness?

We support women in crisis pregnancy because we know that shame has no power over our lives unless we let it. We also know that we could all be in the same situation as another, given the right circumstances. So, we don’t support because we see other women as charity cases, want to convert them or want to control their decisions. We support women because we are all in in this together. Some of us were led by culture to believe that terminating a pregnancy would end a “problem” not knowing that the termination was just beginning one. All humans need real community and freedom from shame and criticism.