{"id":254732,"date":"2021-10-11T18:37:57","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T23:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=254732"},"modified":"2021-10-11T15:02:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T20:02:07","slug":"denver-health-care-pro-life-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/denver-health-care-pro-life-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver health care practice provides pro-life, whole-life care"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Denver health care facility is showing what providing pro-life care from conception to natural death can look like, and doing so in an economically sustainable way. Students for Life of America founder Kristan Hawkins recently spoke with Dede Chism, nurse practitioner and founder of Bella Health + Wellness<\/a>, on her Explicitly Pro-Life podcast\u00a0regarding the innovative pro-life health care model.<\/p>\n

Chism is acutely aware of the ways that the culture of death has seeped into many health care professionals’ attitudes, around pregnancy in particular. With over 20 years of experience working as a perinatal nurse practitioner, directly caring for moms in high-risk pregnancies, she’s found that abortion is often regarded as a way to “treat” high-risk pregnancies. “It’s very, very common that a perinatologist, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, will see a woman with a complication with their child in utero and they will offer them, as an option, an abortion,” she said. “That piece was always a struggle for me.”<\/p>\n

Consequently, she understood that\u00a0pro-lifers need to oppose the acceptance of pro-abortion policies as an automatic default in the practice of mainstream medicine. Though the thought of taking a public stance for life, especially among her colleagues in the obstetrics community, filled Chism with trepidation, she and her daughter Abby, also a nurse practitioner, took the first steps towards opening a pro-life OB\/GYN medical practice. Chism distinguished Bella Health +Wellness’s model from the pregnancy care center model, which has typically provided limited services. However, PRCs are trending towards becoming more medicalized, as Live Action News has previously noted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

READ: How the \u2018abortion is health care\u2019 claim undermines women\u2019s autonomy<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“I came from a fully medical model. My daughter Abby came from a fully medical model,” she said. “I was not familiar at all with the crisis pregnancy center model. So all I knew how to do was to practice medicine. When we opened it, we opened it as a doctor’s office. But what we wanted to be able to attract was people who were questioning what to do next when they were pregnant.”<\/p>\n

Given Chism’s personal experience \u2014 that abortion-minded women were just as likely to be high-powered business executives as they were to be poor high-schoolers \u2014 Bella Health + Wellness sought to reach them all. Though Bella opened as a women’s health clinic in 2014, Chism and her staff were surprised to find within six months of opening, men were coming to them seeking health care as well. Several years after Bella was founded, the organization officially added family medicine to their practice.<\/p>\n

“Where we have found that has been so helpful in the pro-life world and especially in people who are having unexpected pregnancies is that guys feel super, super safe coming in and talking with us and giving us a call and telling us what’s going on,” she said. “It’s created a new trusting avenue through their provider, the guys’ healthcare provider.”<\/p>\n

Bella has experienced growth beyond its wildest original expectations. Over 200 patients are registering there each month, who receive care at one of the three locations, which include one flagship site and two satellite offices, and they’ve been able to help women who have already resorted to abortion. “I don’t think there’s been one time that we’re not in the middle of at least one abortion pill reversal,” she said. “Last year, during COVID, we had seven going on at the same time, with one set of twins.”<\/p>\n