Maternity homes provide support in a post-Roe world, but not without conditions
Faith still marvels at the turn her life took in just a few months. "I'm 25 and I have a curfew," she says. "This is so gross. I hate it."
NPR is not using Faith's last name for this story. She says her ex-boyfriend emotionally and verbally abused her, and she doesn't want him to know where she is. On this day, she reclines on a couch in the living room of the recently renovated house where she now lives. It's a maternity home. Faith is 20 weeks pregnant.
Called the Nesting Place, it's part of a Christian organization in Nampa, Idaho, that tries to dissuade people from abortion and persuade them to take up parenthood. Women can live in the home for free while they carry pregnancies. After their babies are born, they can stay for six months longer.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the pugilistic state and federal legal battles that have followed have garnered all the attention. But another quieter story has played out for women in life-changing ways as the number of abortions has declined markedly.
One group of researchers forecasts 60,000 fewer abortions in the year since abortion became largely illegal in much of the United States. These declines are in the states where pregnant women already faced the greatest risks of maternal mortality and poverty.
