The Crisis Pregnancy Center of Lincoln County marked 25 years of ministry Friday (Sept. 25) with the dedication of a new ultrasound machine, made possible through a partnership between N.C. Baptists and the Psalm 139 Project, a pro-life ministry of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

Leaders from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, the ERLC, the South Fork Baptist Association and area churches gathered at the center to celebrate the anniversary, dedicate the machine and pray over the center’s staff and clients.

Paula McSwain, executive director of Crisis Pregnancy Center of Lincoln County, welcomed attendees and thanked the staff, board members and volunteers who have served the center since its earliest days in a single donated room above a Lincolnton storage building.

“We’re celebrating 25 years of the goodness of God in Lincoln County,” McSwain said.

Bobby Reed, chief financial officer for the ERLC, gave a brief history of the Psalm 139 Project, which began in the early 2000s as a way to give Southern Baptists a tangible way to engage pro-life ministry. Every dollar donated to the project goes directly toward purchasing ultrasound machines or funding the training required to operate them.

Reed said the day represented a beautiful partnership that reflected what Southern Baptists are about — cooperating at the national, state, association, church and individual church membership levels.

“This was a beautiful partnership today, because today we had represented all the different levels of Southern Baptist life,” Reed said. “We had everything from us representing a national entity to the state convention, local association, church pastors and then volunteers that come from churches all over the area.” 

Reed said over the course of the Psalm 139 Project’s existence, more than 100 ultrasound machines have been placed across the country and around the world. Many placements have taken place in North Carolina.

Seth Brown, director of convention relations for N.C. Baptists, has helped coordinate ultrasound placements across the state and offered remarks and a prayer of dedication over the new machine.

“The work you do is in the trenches of ministry,” Brown said, speaking to the staff and volunteers. “The lives of children are often in question. And you do your work not just with their physical lives in your prayers, but their eternal lives as well. If you hear nothing else today, I want you to hear, ‘Thank you.’”

The dedication service also included Scripture readings and prayers from area pastors over expectant parents and unborn children. The program closed with a reading from Psalm 90 and a prayer over the center’s staff and volunteers led by Todd Unzicker, executive director-treasurer of N.C. Baptists.

The center’s new machine replaces one that was roughly 10 years old — double the typical five-year replacement window for the equipment. Staff trained on the new machine throughout the week leading up to the dedication, performing 17 scans before the unit was formally dedicated during Friday’s event.

McSwain said the difference in image quality between the old and new machines has already proven significant in conversations with expectant mothers.

“If we don’t point out every little thing on the old machine, they don’t know what they’re looking at,” McSwain said. “How can you deny that is a baby? I just think this machine is going to be so convincing.”

McSwain said one scan performed on the new machine this week involved an 18-year-old client who asked staff if they could pray with her, as they had during an earlier visit.

“That, to me, was one of the ultimate moments of this week’s training,” McSwain said. “Can we pray again? Absolutely, we can. And we did. You could just see calm come over her.”

The center’s new machine came about after Terry Stockman, associational mission strategist of the South Fork Baptist Association, toured the facility and asked McSwain directly whether she needed a replacement.

“He said, ‘Do you need a new ultrasound machine?’” McSwain recalled. 

“I actually do,” McSwain replied.

“He didn’t let any grass grow under his feet,” she said.

Stockman reached out to Brown at the state convention to get the process started. On Friday, Stockman opened the service with a reading from Psalm 100 and a prayer of thanksgiving for the center’s ministry.

“We thank You, Father, for the provision of a sonogram,” Stockman said in his prayer. “Even though it’s a piece of equipment, what it does can help deliver life instead of death.”

McSwain also read aloud a letter she received the day of the dedication from the mother of a former client who had a baby at the center. The family was moving out of state, and the mother wrote to thank the center’s staff for supporting her and her daughter, adding that she hoped to open her own pregnancy center one day “to give back what has been put into me.”

Founded 25 years ago, Crisis Pregnancy Center of Lincoln County began in a single room before eventually purchasing its current building, which is located in the former offices of a retired OB-GYN.

The center offers pregnancy testing, maternity clothes, ultrasounds, parenting education resources, a life skills class for high schoolers, and ongoing material support for clients until their child turns 2.

The dedication also marked the kickoff of the center’s “Laps for Life” fundraising walk, which McSwain said has a $10,000 matching gift on the table toward this year’s $25,000 goal.

Friday’s dedication marked the 10th ultrasound machine placed in North Carolina in the last four years through N.C. Baptists’ partnership with the Psalm 139 Project. The ultrasound placement was the first since a study published in August by the American Medical Association found that North Carolina became a regional hub for abortion access following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion regulation to the states.

The study found the number of out-of-state patients traveling to North Carolina for abortions more than tripled in the year after Dobbs, rising from 5,596 to 17,703, while the number of North Carolina residents seeking abortions in-state remained roughly flat.

Brown pointed to the findings as a reason for N.C. Baptists’ continued investment in pregnancy centers across the state.

“It is unfortunate that our legislative landscape has turned North Carolina into a destination state for abortions, but thousands of N.C. Baptist churches will not sit and wait for laws to change,” Brown said. “My prayer is that we continue to generously equip as many pro-life clinics as possible with technology that offers a window into the womb. Each mother who walks into one of the many incredible pregnancy centers across this state should be greeted with a beautiful image of the child they carry, and embraced with the love of Jesus Christ flowing through staff and volunteers.”

More information on how churches can partner with N.C. Baptists’ pro-life ministries is available online at ncbaptist.org/life.

By Chad Austin, BR Managing Editor

EDITOR’S NOTE — This article originally appeared on brnow.org.