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An Urban Success Story: Hartford, Connecticut

On the east side of downtown Hartford, in a predominately low-income, Hispanic neighborhood, a group of visionaries joined together in early October 2006, to celebrate the grand opening of the Christian Medical Fellowship Health Clinic.  Located across the street from one of the city’s largest abortion providers and less than one mile from the Hartford Hospital, the small clinic represents a developing partnership between the Christian Medical Fellowship, a group of evangelical doctors that volunteer their time to minister to low-income families, and A Better Choice Women’s Center, a Care Net affiliate operating out of Middletown, Connecticut.  The vision of this joint ministry is to provide low to no-cost health care, abortion alternatives, and more importantly the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to men and women in this widely underserved inner city.

Hartford, Connecticut’s capital and one of its largest cities, is among the many U.S. metropolitan areas to experience tragic abortion rates endemic of urban, minority-based populations.  It is currently estimated that over 94% of abortion providers are located in metropolitan areas and that over 70% of all abortions are performed in minority communities.  In addition, Hartford has estimated that of its 125,000 citizens, more than 40,000 have little or no insurance, making this population particularly vulnerable to government-subsidized abortion service providers. 

As a result, Hartford, and the developing partnership with A Better Choice Women’s Center, has become an important project for Care Net’s Urban Initiative, a program started in 2003 to help plant, assist, and promote pregnancy centers in underserved urban areas.  The Hartford clinic follows an increasingly popular model, where a Care Net affiliate from a nearby rural community will work to facilitate a partnership with an existing urban ministry in order to establish a satellite center.  The two ministries share the cost of the facilities, advertising, and community outreach and are therefore able to meet additional needs and offer more widespread services to the inner city community.  Examples of this model include the successful partnership between the Care Net Pregnancy Center of Redding, California and the Salvation Army as well as the partnership between The House D.C. and Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center in Washington, D.C.

The Hartford model is symbolic of a growing desire among pregnancy centers to reach out to underserved inner city communities that have long been the key target of the abortion industry.  This vision spurred the creation of Care Net’s Urban Initiative and is the driving force behind efforts to establish pregnancy center services in every major city across the United States.