Mary Stolz, a registered nurse at Lakes Life Care Center in Forest Lake, regularly sees women and couples facing what she called “crisis pregnancies.” She said she reaches out to them “wherever they’re at,” loving them and helping them not feel frightened and “that, yes, you can do this,” she said.
“And we give them a very concrete, practical way to walk through this,” she said.
Stolz said she is passionate about performing ultrasounds and testing for sexually transmitted infections, and helping women and their partner make that connection to their baby — to understand “my gosh, this is a human life. This is growing inside of me, and the awe and the wonder,” she said.
Mary Stolz
Stolz recently joined “Practicing Catholic” program host Patrick Conley to describe the work that the clinic does to help women and couples choose life. The latter doesn’t always happen, but Stolz, 60, said in all the three decades she has worked there, she has never seen a woman who was happy she had an abortion.
Stolz performs ultrasounds, which she called “an amazing experience” because she introduces women and couples to their baby.
“You get them to connect and bond with their child,” she said. “And that’s huge, because this is a very scary time.”
Clinic staff spend time on education and discover stresses in the woman’s life. “Are they abortion-vulnerable?” she said. “What’s going on in their lives? But then I add on a different layer of education and try to find out just where they’re at and help them to not be scared.”
She tells clients, “We’re going to stay with you, because we will. We will walk them through this process.” The clinic also offers parenting classes.
Stolz described two clients in back-to-back appointments for whom she performed ultrasounds. Both were nine weeks pregnant. The first had broken up with her boyfriend. At nine weeks, the baby was shown “wiggling around a little bit” on the ultrasound, and Stolz said the woman looked at the baby “with absolute disgust.” Stolz called her a week later and learned she had an abortion. “We were the only people that witnessed that baby’s life, and it was over before that baby (was) even born,” she said.
The second woman came for an ultrasound with her husband, who was out of work at the time. “She had tears running down her face because she had had a miscarriage at eight weeks” but with this pregnancy, she saw her baby’s heart rate, Stolz said.
“It was a totally, totally different experience. And he bends down and kisses her and wipes her tears away. And the difference is love,” she said.
No device, pill, shot or anything else is going to create love, Stolz said.
If Catholics want to bring about a culture of life, they have to examine their personal attitudes toward life, Stolz said. The term “contraceptive mentality” is “kind of what permeates our society right now,” she said.
To learn more about services at Stolz’s clinic, visit LakesLifeCareCenter.org or call 651-464-4340.
To hear more of Stolz’s work experience, her thoughts on changing the culture of life — and to hear the full interview, listen to this episode of the “Practicing Catholic” radio show. It airs at 9 p.m. Sept. 3, 1 p.m. Sept 4 and 2 p.m. Sept. 5 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes interviews with Jean Stolpestad, director of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office of Marriage, Family and Life, who discusses how parishes are preparing for the next step in the Synod process — parish consultation through small groups, and Emily Abe, a young adult and graphic designer who discusses integrating faith and art for the new evangelization in the digital age.
Listen to all of the interviews after they have aired at:
soundcloud.com/PracticingCatholic
tinyurl.com/PracticingCatholic (Spotify)
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