Called the Nesting Place, it’s part of a Christian organization in Nampa, Idaho, that tries to dissuade people from abortion and persuade them to take up parenthood. Women can live in the home for free while they carry pregnancies. After their babies are born, they can stay for six months longer.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the pugilistic state and federal legal battles that have followed have garnered all the attention. But another quieter story has played out for women in life-changing ways as the number of abortions has declined markedly.
One group of researchers forecasts 60,000 fewer abortions in the year since abortion became largely illegal in much of the United States. These declines are in the states where pregnant women already faced the greatest risks of maternal mortality and poverty.
For the women navigating these dangers, allies are hard to come by. Maternity homes are a rare source of support. They’re free — but not without conditions.
Faith struggled to accept the rules: phones turned in at night, home by 11 p.m., visitors only in common spaces, clean drug tests, compliance with the program and contributions to the household. Permission to leave overnight — even for just one night — must be earned through good behavior.
“Those words were scary to me,” says Faith. She’d lived on her own for five years before coming here. But she couldn’t deny that it was the best option given her circumstances: single, pregnant, little family support, unemployed and homeless.
She believed turning down the offer of a place to live would be a mistake. “I just knew immediately,” she says. “I was like, ‘I’d be so stupid.'”
Pregnancy comes with many costs
Faith grew up in Idaho in a family of hunters and sportsmen. But she’s a born singer. Her voice is her gift. “I am very, like — soulful rock,” she says. “Gospel worship is, like, a part of me.” Raised Mormon, she left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a teenager and discovered rock ‘n’ roll and singers like Adele. “I’m a powerhouse, like belter, type of singer.”
She knew she had talent, and neither Idaho nor Colorado, where she moved after high school to live with her sister, was the place to foster it. At 21, Faith packed her car for Los Angeles. She worked there in hospitality at some of the city’s most breathtaking high-end hotels. She was the woman behind the front desk. “I was good at it,” she says. “I loved it.”
But last year, she met a man, also an aspiring musician, and threw herself into the relationship. Not long after, she says, she was feeling depressed, unsure where her music career was heading.
With him, her life unraveled. She lost her apartment. They were soon homeless, bouncing from her car to motels. “We would book the studio for music time and also sleep there,” she explains. Her boyfriend told her he was a chef, but she became suspicious. He didn’t work much.
Maternity homes are a solution the Christian right can support
Back in 2018, Watters read an article in a Christian publication. It posed a question: “What would your state do if Roe v. Wade was overturned?” At the time, that seemed like an outlandish possibility. But it got her thinking. “Wouldn’t a maternity home,” she says, “be the perfect answer?”
There are more than 400 maternity homes across the U.S., according to the Maternity Housing Coalition, an umbrella advisory group. Many are associated with crisis pregnancy centers and — like the Nesting Place — a Christian ministry.
Watters was already running a crisis pregnancy center called Lifeline Pregnancy Care Center when she began dreaming about building a maternity home. She’d seen hundreds of pregnant young women who needed a place to live and, she thought, would benefit from a relationship with the church. She pitched the idea to her board of directors. They went for it, and contractors were finishing renovations on the home that the center had purchased when the Supreme Court issued the decision that overturned Roe. The Nesting Place opened in February…READ MORE
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