Women facing unexpected or difficult pregnancies need resources, support, and especially intensive, holistic medical care.
As the executive director of LifeChoices Family Medical in the Tampa Bay area, Florida, I’m proud to say our work goes a long way in improving women’s health and supporting babies and moms. From its inception, our center's goal was to provide material and financial resources to women in need, and to join the heroic network of nearly 3,000 pregnancy centers across the United States, which have helped countless moms find hope and receive needed material and emotional support.
After years of working to support women in need, we felt called to expand our mission to offer women medical assistance that addresses root causes, and improves women’s emotional and physical health long term. Today, our center serves as an exemplary model of the type of medical health care clinics and care women deserve post-Dobbs.
LifeChoices started out as a pregnancy care center in 2009. and by 2016 we expanded to offer prenatal care services up to delivery and gynecological services by adding a full-time nurse practitioner to our team. In 2018 while at a medical association conference, I met Dr. Mariana Girón, who was completing her residency as a family medicine physician, had done an OB fellowship, and was trained in Creighton FertilityCare and NaProTechnology. It was a dream come true in 2020, when Dr. Girón called to share that she was moving to Tampa and would love to join our team.
Dr. Girón shared her dream of working together and offering moms at LifeChoices prenatal, postpartum, and long-term medical care. She had a vision of pregnancy resource centers partnering with doctors to create a comprehensive medical support system for women in need. She also is Hispanic and bilingual, which I knew would be extremely helpful for many of our patients (we don’t call our moms clients) due to the high Hispanic population in the Tampa Bay area.
The path forward was clear.
So, we got to work. Once Dr. Girón joined our team, our priority was connecting with different insurance companies to ensure that we could offer our patients covered care. Today, we are proud to partner with private insurers, Christian health share programs, Medicare and Medicaid. Our ability to offer Medicaid coverage is critical since many of the moms who come to us are uninsured.
It’s our passion and pride to work with women who may be low income or lack necessary resources. We are grateful to be able to help them sign up for Medicaid right away, and we are quick to connect them with nearby pregnancy resource centers for additional support. We have incredible referral networks and connect moms with organizations offering them free material goods, counseling, after abortion healing, support groups and more.
Our medical staff makes it possible to be there for our clients from far before they even know they are pregnant, to well after their baby is born. Our on-site medical assistants, nurse practitioners and doctor aid our clients with top quality prenatal care, including labor and delivery classes at the center. We also employ an ultrasound sonographer who is able to do our obstetric scans, our gynecological scans, and our fertility study scans. We walk with pregnant moms in need who visit us distressed about the future and can help them however they need throughout their pregnancy.
And since we offer family medical care, we’re able to care for their babies and see and address mom's postpartum health firsthand.
Typically, postpartum moms don’t go back to their OBGYN for six weeks. Yet we’re able to walk with moms and address their mental, physical and emotional health needs related to postpartum recovery.
Our overarching goal is and has always been to empower women to recognize their strength, and to realize that there is ample medical, emotional and financial support available to them if they need it.
Today, when other pregnancy resource centers ask how we transformed to a medical clinic, I’m honest. This was never our strategic plan, and it was certainly challenging work. But by finding a pro-life doctor or medical provider to build around, we can offer more moms the high-quality medical care that must be a priority for women post-Dobbs. Far too often, I hear tragic stories from women who have had past abortions who thought they were alone or that they didn’t have the medical and financial resources to choose life.
Thankfully, our work at LifeChoices offers a great model of one of the ways that pro-life organizations can empower, support and love all women in need so that no woman must walk alone. Our team of physicians, nurse practitioners, administrative staff and volunteers are proud to walk with women and their families however long they need.
Ana Hidalgo Stooks is the executive director of LifeChoices Family Medical in Lutz/Tampa Florida.
