From the Boardroom to the Battle for Life
By Mary Cunningham Agee, National Catholic Register, February 22-28, 1998

Mary Cunningham Agee, 46, is passionate about nurturing women who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy. That’s why in 1985 she started The Nurturing Network, and why she helped it expand to all 50 states and 23 countries around the world.

In saying "yes" to God’s subtle call 13 years ago, after the emotional second trimester miscarriage of her first child, Agee brings every ounce of her Ivy League education and Fortune 100 marketing and strategic planning savvy to bear on the issue at hand. She spoke with Register correspondent Karen Walker in Southern California recently.

Walker: What is your family back-ground?

Agee: I grew up with two brothers and a sister in Hanover, N.H., near Dartmouth College. My parents were separated when I was five-and-a-half. My cousin was a monsignor and the Catholic chaplain at Dartmouth for 37 years. He became my father figure. I had the privilege of having one of the most holy, compassionate, and wonderful leaders in our church at our dinner table every night. Friends would say that our dinner conversations sounded like a seminary discussion and I delighted in them.

He taught me as a little girl the lesson of the cross; how to take a loss as pro-found as the loss of my father at such a young age and raise that up in prayer - to find the blessing in the sacrifice. I believe that literally every cross is permitted in our lives so that we might draw closer to our Lord. The only sadness is if we don’t learn and grow from those crosses that come into our life.

You left a six-figure income and top management position to start Nurturing Network. How did that happen?

I left to raise a family. As much as it was fun to travel around the world, the intense top management lifestyle was not compatible with the kind of wife and mother I wanted to become. With my husband I formed a venture capital and strategy-consulting firm, Semper Enterprises, which still exists.

The turning point from Semper Enterprises to forming the Nurturing Network occurred after I lost our first child in a late term miscarriage. Whenever there is a major loss in my Life, I look at it as a profound invitation to come closer to the compassionate love of Our Lord. I was being asked to understand something more about life and death. It was in the context of losing our child that I heard the call to do something meaningful to help women in a far worse position who were dealing with the loss of a child through abortion. It was a transition from performing a job to doing something vocational in nature.

Why did you choose to incorporate the word "network" in your name?

A lot of thought and prayer went into the name and the logo. I had a very clear sense that this was a vocational calling and I had to be faithful to something that was bigger than my own ideas. "Nurturing" is the ultimate idealistic, qualitative, compassionate expression—it’s all about responding with a compassionate heart. But "network" is the pragmatic side of what we need to do.

Putting these concepts together was very deliberate. I wanted to send the message that it’s not enough to have great ideas, you must have a way to translate those ideas into practice. We need to invite other people in. There’s a vital place for those who are called to argue with their words, to debate. But if all we have is a debate, that’s not enough. I applaud those who are strongly and courageously saying what needs to be said, but I’m asking them to also place those words into action— better yet, sacrificial action. Otherwise our witness is not as authentic and Christ-like as it must be and we leave ourselves open to the kind of criticism we have seen directed at the pro-life movement.

Your literature encourages "pro-choicers" to get involved in your network. Do any volunteer for you and if so, do they retain their original opinion?

That is an important question. All members of our board of directors are profoundly and courageously pro-life. But I see the mission of the Nurturing Network as having an important second ministry, and that is serving the society at large.

Society is confused and broken over this issue. There are so many people looking for a meaningful but not necessarily argumentative or confrontational expression of what they know to be right. The Nurturing Network offers them an effective means for doing that. Out of their own home they can offer inspirational counseling on the phone to a woman in need.

If someone tells us that they are unsure why they are using the label "pro-choice" when they acknowledge that life begins at conception, I invite them to volunteer a few hours at the Network, to understand first-hand what the mothers in crisis are experiencing. What I’ve seen happen often is that people are no longer comfortable with the "pro-choice" terminology once they have experienced the reality of these mothers’ pain.

Pro-life and pro-choice are not opposites and so the verbal debate will go on forever if expressed in these terms. I believe that conversion of the heart is what we are seeking and this is most likely to occur when people get involved in the practical, daily help of someone in this situation. It enables someone to see the emptiness of the "personally opposed, but publicly support" position.

What is needed in order for the Nurturing Network to support an expectant mother in crisis?

There are five core resources that make up a cluster in any community: the nurturing home, the doctor, the counselor and either an educational or employment opportunity. We don’t want a woman to be merely "warehoused" for nine months. We want them to emerge from this pregnancy better off than they were, not worse. If they live in a loving, supportive, nurturing home, receive compassionate counseling and are able to either continue their education or work goals while doing what they know is right in their heart they’ll grow from this crisis. These five resources must be in place in any given location in order to send a Client there.

Are most cases the same?

No. We serve each woman, one woman at a time. Of the more than 10,000 women we have helped during the past 13 years, what has been striking to me is how different every situation is. In one case a woman may come to us feeling betrayed by her parents who are telling her to "get rid of the problem quietly" in order to hide their shame. That’s a very different case from the woman whose parents are very supportive, but she’s just been fired from her job and the father of her child is her boss. In this case we would approach the problem in terms of helping her to find a new job in order to avoid an abusive situation.

In the first case, we’re going to be talking to her about a nurturing home in order to give her parents some time to heal. They, too, are going through a crisis and we need to be compassionate to them as well as to her. Women don’t necessarily go into a nurturing home for the duration of their pregnancy, sometimes it’s only for a few months until the parents, for example, realize that it’s their grand-child they are talking about.

How many volunteer members do you have?

Approximately 22,000.

How many babies do you think you have saved?

More than 10,000.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Finding other people who are vocationally committed. It’s very difficult to manage a volunteer organization. It takes a profound degree of commitment and courage to "stay the course" on the front lines of this battle. Only those with a vocational awareness can give their gift joyfully and for an extended period of time.

Do you see any signs of hope?

There is tremendous hope as people begin to realize that this is not only about unborn babies or pre-born children who are being terminated. As chilling as this is, it is also about violence being inflicted upon women. It is about the Master of Lies adding insult to injury by then deceiving them into calling this tragedy a "freedom" or "choice."

Remember when we were told that artificial contraception would lead to freedom? We’ve found out that women have turned their bodies into toxic waste sites that are now forming cancer in the breast and uterus. It’s time to expose the lies and speak out in defense of human life.

Today’s society tends to be self-centered and me-oriented, yet there are people who are struggling with very difficult marriages because of their faith. You seem so deeply committed to your Catholic faith how do you juxtapose old news reports that you and your husband left spouses to be married in the Church?

That’s a very important question because my husband, who is a convert, and I both take our Catholic faith very seriously. If you read my book [PowerPlay] you’ll read when I began to become emotionally involved with him, I made it clear that if either of us were not granted an annulment, this relationship would be over. We were both civilly divorced at the time. I take very seriously the Church’s teaching on annulment.

We both were granted annulments for reasons that are very private and personal in nature. I believe that if the Holy Father considers annulment to be valid, then I consider it to be valid. If the Holy Father and the Catholic Church can recognize that there are legitimate annulment circumstances that are not about convenience or people not getting along with each other or outgrowing each other— then I accept this also.

The annulment process was extremely challenging. Some people think cynically that it’s just about paying a few dollars, but it’s the most serious act of confession that anyone could ever go through. This was a very serious process for me and it was for my husband too. It requires the most serious reasons for granting an annulment and both Bill and I lived in those serious circumstances.

Both of us were granted annulments. Once the annulments were granted our friendship that we had enjoyed for more than three years matured and blossomed. My faith is my life. The Catholic Church is the truth. If your faith is the truth, you don’t pick and choose what part to practice based on what’s convenient.

What is your personal prayer life like?

I could not do God’s work without a meaningful authentic prayer life. Literally, all day long is a prayer. I don’t know how you can do this work which is really working alongside God the Creator in protecting his gift of life, without an authentic, active prayer life. How do you have a conversation with a pregnant woman who has an appointment for an abortion on Thursday and wants you to talk her out of it without going to the Holy Spirit for inspiration and help?

I also get up at 3:00 a.m. every night to have an hour of silence alone with God—in order to pray without being interrupted by the phone or fax machine or even my own family. My first responsibility is as a wife and a mother, and secondly to the Nurturing Network. I find that time to be a very healing time, a time of insight, renewal, and guidance. I listen best at that time. I would say my prayer life is my secret weapon. Without that I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t possibly guide any woman towards protecting and nurturing life for herself or for anyone else if I didn’t understand who the Author of Life is.

What do you see for the future?

I want every woman who is pregnant today to know the words "Nurturing Network" so that we never again will need to hear that phrase: "If only I had known." It breaks my heart. It makes me feel that I have to run faster and harder, that I’m not doing enough, that I have to get up at 5:00 a.m. instead of 6:00 a.m. and work until 7:00 p.m. instead of 6:00 p.m.

It just means we have to do even more and give our gift more generously, I would be so happy if we could place our 800 number in every at-home pregnancy testing kit. Women need immediate access to our resources.

The battle is now. We’re in a strategic window of time when the American people are waking up to the fact that some-thing is very wrong—that the rhetoric is empty, that they’ve been told lies and the lies are leading to broken hearts and the destruction of innocent life. We are seeing the statistical collapse of all those attractive arguments that promised artificial birth control would lead to fewer crisis pregnancies and fewer abortions.

We’ve seen a dramatic increase in both since artificial birth control was marketed so widely in the early ‘60s. We’ve watched the argument that artificial birth control and abortion would reduce the number of abused children. Again, [that is] factually untrue. Child abuse has skyrocketed during the past 25 years. I believe we are in a critical period of time when the truth must set us free -- free from the culture of death that is taking us over. With the Holy Father leading us forward with his inspired witness to the truth, organizations like the Nurturing Network have an opportunity to boldly and courageously lead people to see that the time is now to fully embrace the culture of life—at all stages of life.

This must begin inside each individual conscience. This is where the violence resides and this is where we must begin the battle to overcome the attitudes and behaviors that make it impossible to "love one another" as Our Lord loves each of us. I see many signs of hope, but the greatest are found in the personal con-version stories we witness each day at the Nurturing Network.

All contents © 1998, The Nurturing Network
Last updated Tuesday, August 08, 2006