An Ohio pregnancy center has helped women choose life since 1985.
Now that ministry just opened a second location and is about to do even more.
One of its tools for reaching women is a pink mobile unit with a name.
The First Location Was Hard to Reach, So Canton Got a Second One
The Pregnancy & Parenting Center just opened a second location in the Canton area, joining its original site that serves Akron and Tuscarawas County.
The center used to go by Pregnancy Choices, and it operates today as part of the Pregnancy Support Network alongside Akron Pregnancy Services, Eva Women's Clinic, and the Hope and Healing Center.
"We thought it was important to go where our clients live and where they frequent," said Kayla Atchison, CEO of Pregnancy Support Network.
The original location sits in a well-off neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac, with no bus line anywhere nearby.
That made it nearly impossible for women with small children, or women without a car, to ever walk through the door.
"We now have the possibility of increasing our numbers," said Paula Mastroianni, executive director of The Pregnancy & Parenting Center, "serving more women."
The new Canton site sits near a university and a bus stop, and it now offers a boutique stocked with baby and maternity items alongside group classes scheduled at new times.
Those classes cover cooking, parenting, financial literacy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, and the new site also launched a men's mentoring program.
Fatherhood programs like it are the fastest-growing service pregnancy centers offer nationally, built on research showing fathers are often the single greatest influence on a woman's pregnancy decision.
Nearly 78 percent of one major pregnancy center network's affiliated locations ran a father-focused program in 2024, up from just 56 percent the year before.
It also sits near a Planned Parenthood, though Mastroianni noted that particular location does not perform abortions.
The facility that does, in Akron, offers both surgical and chemical abortions.
Pregnancy centers now outnumber abortion facilities more than four to one nationwide: 2,775 centers were operating against just 657 abortion facilities as of the latest count.
More than 220 abortion facilities have closed for good since the late 1980s.
The Mobile Unit Waits in the Same Parking Lot as the Abortion Clinic
The center added another way to reach women last year: a mobile unit that drives to communities 45 to 60 minutes away.
"She's big and pink, and we call her Nancy," Mastroianni said.
Nancy parks in the same lot as an abortion facility, positioned for the exact moment a woman is walking in or walking out.
"We can get them literally from the parking lot or from the line of an abortion mill to getting them to see the life that's growing within them," Atchison said.
Pregnancy centers nationwide have been building out this same strategy for years.
Save the Storks has put 109 mobile ultrasound units on the road since 2012, parking them outside abortion facilities from Denver to Dallas.
The group says three out of every four women who step inside one of those buses choose life for their child.
More than 50 employees now staff the center's four locations and its mobile unit, including 20 medical professionals and a family nurse practitioner.
"We are both a clinical and a client-focused ministry," Atchison said.
The Network Is Adding Abortion Pill Reversal to Four Decades of Work
This ministry has kept expanding ever since it first opened, adding new locations after 2020.
Its next step is joining the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, so staff can prescribe progesterone directly to women who regret taking the first abortion pill.
"We are looking to be able to prescribe the progesterone at the time of the intervention and be able to wrap our arms around these women in that time of need," Atchison said.
That network has already logged more than 8,000 babies saved nationwide, built on a corps of 1,500 medical professionals working with more than 4,000 pregnancy centers.
A 2018 peer-reviewed study found the progesterone protocol reverses a mifepristone abortion between 64 and 68 percent of the time when women act within 24 hours.
Ohio needs ministries like this one. The state's infant mortality rate sits at 7.1 deaths for every 1,000 live births, well above the national average of 5.6, ranking Ohio 45th in the country.
That is why Atchison's team now partners with the county health department on workshops covering safe sleep, healthy pregnancy, and nutrition.
Last year alone, more than 2,000 people walked through the doors of the Canton and Akron locations.
More than 700 babies were born because of it, and more than 4,000 students learned about healthy living through the center's outreach.
"That's all really exciting!" Atchison said.
Sources:
- Gayle Irwin, "Ohio Center Expands to Second Location, Plans to Offer APR," Pregnancy Help News, September 8, 2026.
- "Abortion Pill Rescue Network Surpasses 8,000 Lives Saved," Heartbeat International, February 2026.
- "Mobile Ultrasound Unit Parks in Front of Late-Term Abortion Biz to Save Babies," LifeNews.com, March 5, 2026.
- "Explore Infant Mortality in Ohio," America's Health Rankings.
- "Pregnancy Centers Continue to Surpass Brick-and-Mortar Abortion Businesses," Live Action.
- "Why Fatherhood Programs at Pregnancy Centers Build Stronger Families," Care Net.
