25 Ways to Serve Single Mothers in Your Community

header for 25 Ways to Serve Single Mothers in Your Community

There are two kinds of people who stand outside abortion clinics: the ones who yell and scream and the ones who peacefully pray and offer help and hope. The first one makes a woman want to run faster to get inside.

The second one might just make her want to slow down.

Here are 25 simple ways you can serve single mothers in your community.

1. Look for wedding rings when encountering pregnant women and engage in an intentional and Holy Spirit-led conversation. Smile and encourage her. See if she will open up and share how she might need support.

2. Pass a note of encouragement and hope to a single mom you encounter.

3. Lead a 40 Days for Life campaign in your community that aims to end abortion through prayer and fasting, community outreach, and a peaceful all-day vigil in front of abortion businesses.

4. If the idea of praying outside an abortion facility intimidates you, try praying from your car and park at an angle so you can see the women walking in. God works through your prayers no matter where you are!

5. Find out who leads your local sidewalk counsel group or sidewalk prayer groups and offer to host a meal for the volunteers or provide snacks and water on a hot day when they are serving.

6. Ask sidewalk counselors to speak to your church or small group about what they’ve experienced and how people can get involved.

7. If you have artistic gifts, offer to make signs for your local sidewalk groups that are encouraging, uplifting, and full of love.

8. Sign up with Sidewalk Advocates for Life for training on how to reach women walking into abortion clinics through a peaceful, prayerful, law-abiding sidewalk advocacy program.

9. Connect with a sidewalk counseling ministry and go through their training. Ask a friend to do it with you!

“There are two kinds of people who stand outside abortion clinics: the ones who yell and scream and the ones who peacefully pray and offer help and hope.”

10. Create a list of local ministries and resources you can have ready for when you meet a single and pregnant mom— especially your local pro-life pregnancy center, complete with phone numbers. Share that list with friends so you’re prepared when God connects you with someone who needs help.

11. Reach out to your local high school/college counselors and nurses to make sure they have information about local pregnancy centers or other community resources that can help a new mom who just found out she is pregnant. Also, share your heart and passion with any high school teachers you know and tell them that if they hear or know of any pregnant women in the schools, you would love to connect with them to offer help and support.

12. Watch and follow your Facebook Buy/Sell/Trade pages or Marketplace pages for single moms who are asking for gently used baby items or mention needing help. Reach out to see how you can help connect her to people, churches, or ministries in your community.

13. Purchase Love Boxes from EmbraceGrace.com and keep one or two in your car, to be available when you might meet someone with an unplanned pregnancy. It’s a great tool that inspires a life decision and encourages a young mom who might need hope and community.

14. Print an ad in your church directory, bulletin, or website with contact information for the local pregnancy centers and Embrace Grace Support Groups.

15. With the permission of the owners of stores that sell baby clothes and supplies, place business cards or flyers that offer help and resources for single moms.

16. Connect with your local OB/Gyn offices and place business cards or flyers offering help and resources for single moms.

17. Pastors, share from the platform, on occasion, that leaders are here to help if anyone ever experiences an unplanned pregnancy.

18. If you are a restaurant owner or have a company with a large number of young workers, try placing help and support flyers in your employee bathrooms with information on where to find help. Provide support hotline phone numbers they can access if they need help or that they can share with a friend who needs help.

19. Become a volunteer advocate for your community with LoveLine, an organization that helps single and pregnant moms who feel they have exhausted all opportunities for resources in their area. Through LoveLine, you can search for resources in your area to help women who can’t find physical and emotional support in their community.

20. Do you love to drive? Become a Stork Bus Volunteer Driver! If you have a flexible schedule, are passionate about ministering in the pro-life movement, and love road trips, connect with Save the Storks or a local pregnancy center near you that has a mobile medical unit. Many pregnancy centers have sonogram machines on vans and busses and will park close to abortion clinics and offer free ultrasounds. The mobile units are beautiful and inviting, with licensed and professional medical staff providing free counsel and medical services.

21. On your social media pages, make it known that you are a safe person to talk to if anyone knows someone who needs help because of an unintended pregnancy.

22. Marketing and SEO companies, find a pregnancy help organization you love in your community and offer to help with their search engine optimization so women with unplanned pregnancies can find them quickly online. Consider financially supporting pro-life marketing and SEO ministries like Human Coalition and Heroic Media.

23. Connect with social workers in your area and provide materials about resources in your community that they can share with women with unplanned pregnancies.

24. Organizations with a pro-life focus on outreach for women at abortion centers have all the usual volunteer needs for writers and editors, graphic designers, technology assistance, etc. What might you uniquely offer to support their ministry and keep the ship running?

25. Volunteer to make literature packets or “Blessing Bags” for local Sidewalk Advocates. Find out how here.

Also here are a handful of organizations of which you maybe should be aware so that you can help single mothers in your community:

40 Days for Life
Heartbeat International
Heroic Media
ICU Mobile
Human Coalition
ProLove Ministries
Save the Storks
Sidewalk Advocates for Life

Alliance Defending Freedom created a Legal Guide for Sidewalk Counselors manual to educate you about your legal rights when engaging in sidewalk counseling. Go to adflegal.org for your free download.

Heartbeat’s Option Line (800-712-HELP): call or text 24/7 for unplanned pregnancy support.

Prolove Ministries Loveline (888-550-1588): call or text 24/7 for unplanned pregnancy support.

Abortion Pill Rescue (877-558-0333): call or text 24/7 for women who have taken the first dose of the abortion pill (Mifeprex or RU-486) and now regret the decision and wish to reverse the effects.

For Further Reading:

Help Her Be Brave

by Amy Ford

Discover your place in the pro-life movement. What if we lived in a world where every woman with an unplanned pregnancy always felt empowered...

book cover for Help Her Be Brave