Tears filled Tierra McCarty’s eyes as she saw her cellphone notifications pop up, one after another. Strangers were sending her money.
God was answering prayer and using technology to do it.
“Are you okay?” her teacher asked as the notifications and tears continued.
McCarty was in her first week of classes to become an aviation technician. It was a dream she says God placed on her heart as she searched for a way to make a better life for her two kids. But after her first day of classes and a shift at work that night, McCarty came out to find her car gone. It had been repossessed. What had seemed like a God-ordained path felt blocked as she lost her only means to get to work or school.
Desperate, McCarty reached out to Amy Ford, founder of Embrace Grace, a Texas-based ministry that had supported her during an unexpected pregnancy eight years earlier. McCarty had remained connected with the ministry in the years that followed and knew that Ford sometimes posted about urgent needs on social media.
“I feel like I’m drowning with my kids in my arms,” Ford recalls McCarty saying.
Ford posted McCarty’s story on her personal Facebook page, where she has 7,000 followers who support Embrace Grace, and the amount needed to get the car back—around $5,000. Within days, the request was met by a mix of small and large donations from various people.
McCarty’s story is just one of many now happening across the US as pregnancy support centers harness technology to meet urgent needs in real time.
“It’s just cool to see everybody coming together for a cause, and Facebook seems to be a really good platform,” Ford said.
For more than 50 years, Heartbeat International has served women with unplanned pregnancies, building the largest network of pregnancy resource centers in the world. Heartbeat president Jor-El Godsey recalls that during his earlier days working at a pregnancy center, he heard about a client who was biking three miles to work each day. The center put out a request in a newsletter to help her get a car. Social media, he said, is today’s newsletter, and he sees the benefit of using it and other technology to help moms in a more expedient way.
“If it’s really a connected community, then there’s a great way simply to say, ‘These are the needs that we have,’ or ‘This person has this particular need,’” Godsey said.
Many of the more than 4,000 Heartbeat-affiliated centers already use social media tools to serve clients, he said. In addition to general Facebook posts on specific pages, they commonly use giving apps that notify people of needs and allow them to donate instantly from their smartphones to make giving easier. Godsey said he’s only heard positives from those who have used these tools, and he’s found that the support can influence whether a woman chooses to keep a baby.
“To be able to say we can help you with this and we can help you with those other things and we can provide, it unlocks for them the fact that they can do this,” he said.
A 2023 peer-reviewed study published in the medical journal Cureus found that lack of support and lack of financial security both play significant roles in women’s decision to get an abortion. Of the 1,000 American women surveyed, 54 percent said they would have continued their pregnancy if they had had more financial security.
Human Coalition, a national pro-life organization, also reports that many of the women who contact them considering an abortion say they would prefer to parent if their circumstances were different.
“We address those barriers so that they can make a decision with a clear head, not based on temporary circumstances,” said Becky Gallagher, national director of social services for Human Coalition.
Erin Rogers, executive director of the Bakersfield Pregnancy Center, has witnessed the difference support can make in the lives of women.
“For some of our clients, it’s those very practical things that make them believe that having this baby is just impossible,” Rogers said.
Anel Rubio is an example. At 16, she received help at Bakersfield after learning she was pregnant with twins. Part of what brought Rubio peace was the way the center helped meet her physical needs.
“They were able to provide a lot of the things that I needed to start,” Rubio said.
That help included everything from prenatal vitamins and clothing to contact information for a health provider and enough clothes and diapers for the babies’ first year of life.
“I don’t know where I would be without the support of the Bakersfield Pregnancy Center,” Rubio said. “I feel like they set me up for success.”
At Bakersfield, Rogers said staff now use a software program called Meet the Need.
“I think pregnancy centers should use every tool that they can reasonably do,” Rogers said.
She likes Meet the Need because it doesn’t cost anything and has been effective. Staff at the center are able to share a link to Bakersfield’s Meet the Need where specific requests are listed in digital and nondigital communication, and if someone calls wondering how best to give support, they can direct them to the site.
“It’s a very easy tool to use to remind people who you are and what you’re doing and how they can get involved,” she said.
Another platform used by some pregnancy centers is called CarePortal.
With CarePortal, centers can publicize specific needs someone has, such as for a stroller for twins or help with vehicle repair. Churches register to receive notifications when a need is posted and then share it with their circles.
Gallagher said Human Coalition–affiliated centers have been using CarePortal to serve clients in Texas and North Carolina and are starting to expand use in Georgia. She said it’s been a blessing for women in need.
“They get to receive timely, compassionate support that helps relieve immediate stress and then reminds them that they’re not alone during a vulnerable season,” Gallagher said.
It can also be the start of a deeper relationship with people and the church.
“That is always a hope of ours, that the clients can see the love of Christ through tangible help,” she said.
Most needs are met the same day, while larger requests, such as a rent payment, can take up to a week or two.
There is a risk that with ease of giving, donations can become automatic or so sophisticated that it loses a personal connection, according to Godsey. “Even if someone is faithfully giving a few dollars every month or significant dollars on a regular basis, it can be done automatically,” he said.
He believes part of the solution is for pro-life organizations to share the prayer requests and personal stories behind the needs.
At Embrace Grace, Ford said she’s found the posts for help that get the strongest response are those in which she shares the most details about the person needing the support, because it allows others to relate more.
“People want to know the story—the why,” she said.
To mitigate the risk of someone taking advantage of people’s generosity, Ford makes sure she only posts a need for women she knows personally through Embrace Grace and knows have legitimate needs. Ford posts links for people to donate directly to the person, such as Venmo or Cash App, and then the individuals let her know when the need has been met.
Sometimes, people who donate continue to build connections with the people they help. McCarty, for instance, received some donations from people who work in the aviation industry and told her to get in touch when she graduates. Others have added her on social media and followed her journey. When she posts a video of herself working on a plane, they’ll leave comments of encouragement.
The whole experience was spiritually uplifting, McCarty said.
“It just opened my eyes to a deeper revelation of how much God loves me and how much he’s gonna cover me and keep me,” she said.
This spring, when she walks across the stage at graduation, she will remember the people God used to make it possible.
“God knew exactly what needed to happen,” McCarty said. “I needed the courage to ask for help, and then I just needed to sit and watch him make that way for me.”
