This is a love story; not a romantic love story, mind you, but a love story all the same. About two years ago, Hana Soldi was twenty-five and involved in what the modern era terms a 'relationship' with a young man. Today Hana admits that this was not a healthy thing, but what’s done is done. Hana became pregnant.

Hana and several other members of her family had moved to the United States from Peru four years ago, after the death of her mother. Shining dark brown hair frames Hana’s light complexion, which she inherited from her parents, both of whom immigrated to Peru from eastern Europe. Her large dark eyes reflect both the pain and the joy she has known in recent months.

Hana is slim and just a few inches over five feet tall, with a smile that lights up her whole face. Although she has a noticeable Spanish accent, she is fluent in English and quite articulate. She speaks with a calm intensity, maintaining eye contact almost constantly.

"When I learned I was pregnant," Hana recalled, "I got no support from the baby’s father. We had talked about the possibility of a pregnancy, but when it became a reality, he couldn’t handle it. He didn’t want me to have the baby, and when I refused to have an abortion, he wanted me to give the baby up for adoption. And his family would have nothing to do with the baby.  Hana also received no support from her own family. "I had nowhere to go," she said. "Then by accident—it was sent by God, I guess—I found a tiny ad in a parenting magazine about the Nurturing Network. The message was that this organization would offer support to women who were thinking about abortion."  Providing needed support The Nurturing Network is an organization based in Boise, Idaho. The founder and director is Mary Cunningham Agee, forty years old and a graduate of Wellesley College and the Harvard Business School.

Until a few years ago, Mrs. Agee was involved in a successful career in the world of corporate business and international finance. Then she experienced a miscarriage. Her grief from this ordeal led her to consider, in the light of her Catholic faith, the plight of women faced with the difficult and painful decision of whether to have an abortion.  Mrs. Agee conducted an informal survey of women who had abortions and discovered that the majority of them were young middle-class women who would not have had abortions if they’d been able to find the support they needed to get through their pregnancies without sacrificing their educations, careers, or family ties.

The Nurturing Network was Mary Cunningham Agee’s response to this situation.

When Hana Soldi called the toll-free number she found in the advertisement, she joined the more than twenty-five hundred women who have contacted the Network since it began in 1985. That’s more than twenty-five hundred abortions that did not happen; over twenty-five hundred babies who would not otherwise have seen the light of day.

According to Mrs. Agee, not one woman who has contacted the Network since the beginning has decided to proceed with the abortion.

Care Incorporated

"I was in a desperate situation," Hana recalled. "I felt very lonely, absolutely devastated. I couldn’t even tell anybody I was pregnant. At the time, I was going to school and had a job caring for a baby whose parents had hired me. I finally had to tell them I was pregnant, and I couldn’t keep my job with a baby of my own."

When Hana first called the Network, she was wary. "I wasn’t sure who these people were. Maybe they would pressure me in some way. I didn’t know what to expect. But they were very interested. They asked me many questions, and they were not in a hurry to say, ‘Oh, yes, we’ll do this and this.’ Instead, they were genuinely interested in me, in how I was doing. They asked if I needed help and said they would send an questionnaire to find out what I needed."

The application Hana received is fifteen pages long. It asks the medical questions one might expect, but it also poses questions of a philosophical and religious nature. It is designed to help a woman articulate her feelings and convictions about the meaning of life, but there is no attempt to impose a particular religious viewpoint on the prospective Client.

The Nurturing Network will do almost anything to support a woman during pregnancy. They will help her to relocate and find her a family to live with thousands of miles from home, if that’s what she needs and wants. And they work hard to find a family as much like the Client’s own family as possible.

If a woman’s parents are college professors or in business, the Network will find a similar family for her to live with until her baby is born. If the Client is allergic to pots, a home without pots will be found. If she’s a vegetarian, a vegetarian home is what she will have.

If the Client is a young career woman who doesn’t want to stay in her present position while pregnant, a similar position will be found with another employer in another part of the country. If she is a student and isn’t comfortable with staying where she is, another school will be found that will allow her to continue her present course of study. A Catholic woman can count on being welcomed into a Catholic home. A Protestant or Jewish woman can expect to be welcomed by a Protestant or Jewish family.

Inspiration and friendship

"The woman I talked to at the Network encouraged me to call anytime I felt depressed—and I did get depressed to the point where I wasn’t interested in living anymore. The only thing that kept me going was my baby, the thought that I should live for my baby. The Nurturing Network saved not only my baby’s life but my own life as well."

"Just talking on the phone to the woman at the Nurturing Network helped me so much. They were always interested. They offered to help me move or to go to another college. They sent me a brochure that described exactly how I was feeling. And they asked if I would like to have an ‘inspirational counselor.’

"I felt that would be really nice, to meet someone who had been where I was, someone I could talk to. I didn’t know anybody who had been pregnant out of wedlock. I couldn’t even imagine myself being there. They told me about a lady who’d been in my situation and had kept her baby. I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ They explained that she lived really close to where I live.

The Network counselor gave Hana the phone number of a woman named Jane Kinney. If Hana found it helpful to talk to Jane, the counselor said, Jane could be her inspirational counselor. Hana called and arranged for them to get together Hana said, "It was incredible to find somebody I could talk to. With Jane I didn’t have to hide anything. We could talk about anything. I found out about the Nurturing Network at just the right time—and I met Jane at just the right time."

A perfect match

Jane Kinney, thirty-nine, is currently in law school, but her background is in business and accounting. Going to law school is the realization of a dream Jane has had since she was in high school. But a couple of years ago she too was involved in a relationship, and the baby’s father left when she became pregnant. Before Jane’s baby girl Georgia was born, doctors discovered the baby had a rare chromosomal abnormality. This led to her death from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) three weeks after birth.

Jane knew nothing about the Nurturing Network until after Georgia’s death. Later a friend came across information about the Network and passed it along to her. Jane made contact, thinking she could be of assistance. "I told them my story over the phone," Jane said, "and they asked me to put it in writing. So I wrote them a letter, and they sent me information about the Network along with a application designed for anyone who wanted to be an inspirational counselor. I filled it out and sent it back. I was in contact with them for five or six months before Hana and I met."

"One of the things that impressed me about the Nurturing Network was that I didn’t sense the terrible anger or hatred you sometimes sense from anti-abortion groups. There was real compassion and caring."

A home for Hana

When Hana and Jane first met, the Network was looking for a home for Hana. Ordinarily, clients are welcomed by married couples who have space in their home and in their lives for one more.

"It was good enough," Hana said, That I had found someone I could talk to. But after a while, Jane mentioned that she had a two-bedroom apartment and that her niece, who had been living with her, had moved out. I was looking for a place, but nobody wanted a pregnant woman." Hana was due to give birth near Christmas 1990.

Jane said she thought of asking Hana to share her apartment, but she had mixed feelings.  "l realized Hana didn’t have a place to stay. I was thinking I’d like her to stay here, but I was concerned about myself—so was the Nurturing Network. That’s why they continued looking for another place for Hana. They were afraid a baby in the house, especially around Christmastime, might bring up feelings I wasn’t ready for. Also, I already had plans to be gone for Christmas."

"But as things developed and we discovered we had this great rapport, it seemed worth a try. I didn’t want to sound too self-centered, but we both needed to be sensitive to the fact that I might not be able to cope with it. The pain from Georgia’s death was still so bad that I would go into restaurants and if I saw children, I’d turn around and go the other way."

"I was feeling that way too, Hana said. "I didn’t want to hurt anybody, especially someone who had been so wonderful to me."

Jane invited Hana to live with her until after her baby was born, and Hana was delighted.

"It was just wonderful," Hana said, smiling. "We are in many ways alike, very compatible. And the faith we share is wonderful too. I began going to Mass again, and I got closer to God because of all this. I don’t want to remember how bad it was before I met Jane."

A Christmas birth

Hana’s baby son Ian was born on Christmas day. Jane had gone to be with her family for three days, so she was not present for the birth, but she and Hana talked by phone. The Network sent me a Christmas card that said, "Love was born on Christmas." So I sent them one that said, ‘And so was Ian!’ Ian means ‘a gift from God.’"

Two weeks after Ian was born, the doctors told Hana that he had Down syndrome, one of the most common congenital disorders, which results in mental retardation. "When I told the Nurturing Network," Hana said, "They were very supportive and very comforting. At first the whole story had been so beautiful that I didn’t want to add anything bad. I finally told them, and it was okay. It isn’t really bad at all, Ian is just different, that’s the way he is. He’s very healthy. I don’t even want to call him not normal."

"After Ian was born," Jane recalls, "things turned around for me. I could go up to children and look at them and know that someday I’d have another child of my own. Helping someone else helped me. Something good happened to Hana, but something really good happened to me because of her. I was surprised at how much I got out of the whole experience. Through Hana and the Network, God was quietly shoving me back into the land of the living."

Special sharing

Because Jane had given birth to a baby with a chromosomal disorder, God’s love was present in a special way. Jane could identify with Hana’s initial feelings of sadness and disappointment. She could even accompany Hana and Ian for appointments with medical specialists she herself had visited previously with Georgia.  "lf God didn’t bring us together." Hana said, "l don’t know who did."

Jane pointed out to Hana that there would be other blessings. Because her baby had Down syndrome, Hana would find a whole community of people she would not have met otherwise. "l will have a better life because Ian has Down syndrome," Hana said. "And none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for the Nurturing Network."

The love continues

The temptation for a writer is to end the story here, "happily ever after." But the real world is different from fairy tales. Hana and Jane are both in school but uncertain of their individual futures. Jane still mourns the death of her baby girl. Hana has an apartment of her own now, and the life of a single parent is highly stressful. Also, Hana still sees Ian’s father from time to time, though neither he nor his family will have anything to do with Ian.

This is a love story, it’s true, a story with God’s love on every page. But the story is still being told. There are no neat, tidy "happily-ever-afters" here -- well, maybe just one. A one-year-old baby boy named Ian smiles and cries, gurgles and plays, thanks in large part to the Nurturing Network.