Crisis pregnancy organisation Gianna Care has told of “a really good year” for their services, despite the obvious challenges presented by Covid-19.
Challenges
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Gianna Care director Carolyn O’Meara told of the challenges the year posed for everybody, and how it affected their often hands-on, in-person work.
“We’d a lot of challenges and we had to adapt, and luckily, we’ve just fantastic volunteers and everybody adapted to the situation and we did the best that we could by, you know, posting out things to women, doing Zoom chats and chats on the phone,” Mrs O’Meara said.
Gianna Care receives on average between 40-50 contacts a month from women for a variety of reasons.
“It might be just a question related to a result of a pregnancy test, it could be a crisis pregnancy but not abortion-minded, an abortion-minded woman in crisis, post-abortion women looking for counselling…a lot of them have had challenges due to Covid as well.” Those difficulties include financial pressures, job instability, and crisis pregnancies.
In spite of the increased demand for their help, Gianna Care has managed to expand its operation, with Mrs O’Meara referencing the new locations the non-profit has opened this year alone.
New locations
“We’ve opened in three new locations this year as well, which has been super busy to organise. Obviously it was in the background before 2020 that these things would be happening but they’ve all opened up. So we had Kerry in April, we had in July, Offaly, and then just most recently, we’ll be launching Limerick.”
The expanded scope of their operation has allowed Gianna Care to reach more women this year than they previously would have – with 75 women who were “extremely” abortion-minded choosing to keep their babies.
“(They had) not necessarily wanted to have an abortion but felt that they had no choice, contacted Gianna Care and luckily, they felt empowered and supported enough to be able to choose life for their babies. We’d a lot of births, and we’ve a lot of pending births, and yeah, really, really exciting year. It’s been great overall to be honest.”
Mrs O’Meara was quick to attribute the success of their work throughout 2020 to their supporters and volunteers, saying the work cannot “happen without them”.