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A nonprofit founded in 1996, Real Alternatives offers assistance to women experiencing unexpected pregnancy. Through its Pregnancy and Parenting Support Services Program, Real Alternatives has transformed the lives of numerous women in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan. The program focuses on providing essential support services to women, some of which are:

Counseling

A majority of the counselors that Real Alternatives employs have obtained an undergraduate or graduate degree in nursing or social work. The counselors offer confidential support, guidance, and encouragement in a nonjudgmental atmosphere so that women feel empowered to choose childbirth over adoption.

Education

Childbirth, pre- and post-natal, and pregnancy classes teach women about fetal development and their nutritional needs.

Adoption Assistance

Access to adoption service information and referral to licensed adoption agencies is provided to help find a loving couple to support and take care of the child.

Tangible aid

With the help of various service providers, women gain free access to food, clothing, and basic supplies for the child.

Vocational training

Participants in the Pregnancy and Parenting Support Services Program receive education referrals and assistance with career decisions so they can achieve independence and self-sufficiency while caring for their children.

For more than 20 years, Real Alternatives has worked closely with a network of service providers, including pregnancy support centers, social service agencies, and maternity homes, to offer pre- and post-natal support to women. Through these service providers, Real Alternatives offers a range of core and support services including life-skills training and education to women experiencing unexpected pregnancies.

One-on-one sessions and group classes focused on pregnancy, parenting, and nutrition are available to women who participate in the Pregnancy and Parenting Support Services Program. Counselors and mentors use educational materials such as books, brochures, videos, and fetal models to teach women about fetal development, nutritional requirements, and what to expect pre- and post-pregnancy. Women can also attend certified childbirth classes and take part in programs that help to relieve stress and encourage lifestyle changes to prevent unexpected pregnancy in the future.

Real Alternatives regularly reviews the classes and training administered by the service providers to ensure that the information imparted is accurate, safe, and remains consistent with the organization’s goal of promoting childbirth over abortion.

Based in Pennsylvania, Real Alternatives is a nonprofit organization that provides pregnancy and support services to women experiencing an unexpected pregnancy. The counselors and staff at Real Alternatives Service Providers guide and engage both women in meaningful conversations that help them realize that abortion is not the only choice or solution.

Counselors from Real Alternatives Service Providers have cited stories of pregnant women who resort to abortion because they are pressured by their parents, partners, and friends that it’s the right and only decision to make based on the circumstances. Some women are young and reluctant to face motherhood, while others are frightened about bringing a child into the world alone while poor.

Counselors take the time to sit with these women to get a better understanding of their situation and empower them to choose childbirth over abortion. Once they get into the Pregnancy and Parenting Support Services Program, they have access to regular counseling, mentoring, and classes to prepare them for motherhood. To ease some of their burdens, expectant mothers are also given financial assistance, temporary housing, food, baby clothes, and furniture.

Many of these women who felt confused, hopeless or forced to make an abortion decision but reached out to Real Alternatives instead have transformed their lives. They have mended their relationships with their families, found stable jobs, and gone back to school after choosing childbirth.

Real Alternatives operates pregnancy support services at centers across Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan, offering women the support and resources they need to choose life. Funded through several government programs, Real Alternatives has seen substantial decreases in abortion rates under the leadership of its president and CEO, Kevin Bagatta.

Born in Long Island, New York, Kevin Bagatta received an early introduction to the importance of choosing life. His handicap father and mother understood the ramifications of the Roe v. Wade court decision legalizing abortion, partly from seeing the results of the lack of appreciation for the sanctity of life in Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany disposed of lives, including the disabled, it deemed not worthy to live. His father had been exposed to Nazism firsthand while serving in the military during World War II.

After graduating from law school while living in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, Kevin Bagatta saw an advertisement for a job with a pro-life organization to direct a program funded by the government. He ended up taking the job, becoming a pioneer in the pro-life and women’s pregnancy support services movement. That led to the establishment of the organization Real Alternatives and his executive leadership of services funded by the Pennsylvania Alternative to Abortions Service Program.

Real Alternatives works with women experiencing crisis pregnancies in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Indiana. The nonprofit provides free counseling, adoption referrals, and other services, all delivered with empathy and without judgment, to provide women with options outside of abortion.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of research, in fields as diverse as neuroscience and social psychology, on the effects of empathy in professional-client relationships. Numerous studies have indicated the improvements in patient outcomes when doctors demonstrate empathy. For example, a 2014 article in the Hawaii Journal of Medicine and Public Health stated that medical providers’ empathy toward patients resulted in greater trust and a better exchange of needed information.

The Association of American Medical Colleges has even listed the cultivation of empathy as a core portion of the professional curriculum it recommends for medical students. Social workers and those in other nonmedical helping professions also cite the ability to show empathy as an essential skill for constructive engagement with clients.

Real Alternatives maintains a range of local crisis pregnancy and counseling centers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Indiana. To date, hundreds of thousands of women have benefited from the free services provided by Real Alternatives; in one recent year alone, some 25,000 women received these services. The nonprofit offers a number of ways for interested parties to contribute to its mission.

Making a tax-deductible donation helps Real Alternatives bring its program to other states. These new programs fund counseling sessions focused on abortion alternatives for women in crisis, support parenting education classes, as well as connections to adoption providers and social services. Donors should know that theses programs also provide housing, clothing, food, and other necessities for mother and child for up to a full year after a baby’s birth.

The nonprofit also encourages people to let friends and family know about its toll-free hotline, 1-888-LIFE-AID. Additionally, sharing the nonprofit’s “Miracle of Life” video, available at RealAlternatives.org, helps to educate the public about the neurological development and full humanity of babies before birth.

Since 1996, Real Alternatives has sought to provide free, compassionate counseling and support to women going through crisis pregnancies. The organization offers a practical path to make it easier for women to choose life over abortion. In addition to its crisis pregnancy services, the organization supplies extensive information on making healthy lifestyle choices. Real Alternatives has dedicated a portion of its website to educating young people on how to deal with the pressure to become sexually active when they are not yet ready to do so.

Contrary to the messages found in much of today’s popular culture, not all teens are having sex. In 2007, slightly less than 50 percent of students in high school had had sexual intercourse. In 2017, that figure dropped to about 40 percent. These numbers are significantly lower than the 54 percent who reported having had sex in 1991. However, studies show that more than half of teenage boys and close to three-fourths of girls reported wishing they had waited longer before taking the serious step of having sex.

The counselors at Real Alternatives have provided a number of practice conversations that young people can have if they feel pressured to have sex. Find more tips on the organization’s website, RealAlternatives.org.

Real Alternatives contracts with Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Indiana as a nonprofit provider of crisis pregnancy counseling, adoption referrals, and supportive social services. As part of its commitment to extending life-affirming support to pregnant women, the organization provides access to parenting classes and information on the development of babies before birth.

Babies in utero have highly sophisticated nervous systems, and their rapidly growing brains respond to the sounds of music and language. In fact, researchers have demonstrated the importance of hearing sound for the development of an unborn baby’s ability to think and reason.

Many experts believe that by about 23 weeks, an unborn baby can perceive sound. Moreover, research shows that the portions of the brain responsible for processing sounds are fully functioning by the last trimester.

Unborn babies can detect the rhythms of both music and human speech. Scientists have found that after birth, babies retain memories of the sounds they heard in the womb. One study, conducted in the 1980s, showed that newborns seem to be already familiar with the sounds of their parents’ native language.

Beyond promoting the development of the baby’s brain, reading aloud and listening to music help a mother to feel more relaxed, as does talking to her unborn baby. In this relaxed state, the mother’s body releases happiness-inducing chemicals into her baby’s bloodstream.

Real Alternatives provides free counseling and crisis-related pregnancy services in Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Real Alternatives focuses on empowering women by providing comprehensive information on adoption, as well as family support services should they choose to raise their babies themselves.

While American law is clear that no one can force any woman - even if she is a minor - to have an abortion, in some countries, this right to personal autonomy is not respected.

In some provinces in China, for example, even after the 2015 government reforms toward a “two-child” rather than a “one-child” policy, some women can still be forced to undergo abortions. If a woman is found to be pregnant with a child in excess of the quota assigned to her, she may be required to terminate her pregnancy.

Since the 2015 shift in policy, a married couple may have up to two children. The Chinese government penalizes unmarried pregnant women through a “zero-child” policy.

Even in the United States, some family members continue to pressure pregnant women into abortions. Such pressure can take the form of manipulation of a woman’s feelings, threats to withhold financial or emotional support, and even physical violence. Real Alternatives encourages women in this situation to call its hotline, 1-888-LIFE-AID, which offers judgment-free, practical, and compassionate advice, counseling, and referral services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, through Real Alternatives provides women who are pregnant with a variety of free, caring, and confidential alternatives to abortion. The services offered by Real Alternatives and the state of Pennsylvania are available to any woman who is experiencing an unexpected pregnancy or who has an infant less than a year old.

The World Health Organization has stated that reproductive health is important for women. Pennsylvania Alternatives to Abortion Services provides many resources to improve reproductive health. The program is designed to support the well-being of the mother and baby.

Clients can receive free pregnancy tests, counseling, and referrals to other agencies for medical care and assistance with food, money, and baby supplies. With more than 90 centers throughout the state, trained counselors support mothers during pregnancy and afterward as they care for their children. They can help mothers find a place to live, figure out how to continue their education, and provide maternity and baby clothes, baby furniture, and baby food.