Our Mission

The ABBA ministry, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will reach out to those women in pregnancy related crisis in the Greater Portland/Cumberland County area who seek help in their decision making process by providing life affirming, Christ centered solutions.

Our Goal

The ministry’s goal will be to show these women that they are loved and cared for emotionally, physically, and spiritually so that they will have hope. We believe changing the heart changes the woman.

Our Prayer

ABBA’s prayer is that restoration and redemption will come through loving relation building discipleship. Through compassionate but uncompromising individual and group counseling, the ABBA ministry will work with these women in crisis to bring them, their babies, and their loves ones to a decision making process that will help them to break the bondage that holds them by offering the freedom that only a life with Jesus as Lord will bring.

Our Vision

To seek out, provide, and implement programs, materials and personnel that will present our mission to affirm the Sanctity of Human Life and the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Greater Portland/Cumberland County.

Our Motto

Speaking Words of Truth through Deeds of Love

Our Statement of Principle

• ABBA, A Women’s Resource Center is an outreach ministry of Jesus Christ through His church. Therefore, ABBA, embodied in its volunteers, is committed to presenting the gospel of our Lord to women with crisis pregnancy situations- both in word and in deed. Commensurate with this purpose, those who labor as ABBA board members, staff and volunteers are expected to know Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.
• ABBA is committed to providing its clients with accurate and complete information about both prenatal development and abortion.
• ABBA is committed to integrity in dealing with clients, earning their trust, and providing promised information and services. ABBA denounces any form of deception in its corporate advertising or individual conversations with its clients.
• ABBA is committed to assisting women to carry to term by providing emotional support and practical assistance. Through the provision of God’s people and the community at large, women may face the future with hope and plan constructively for themselves and their babies.
• ABBA does not discriminate in providing services because of race, creed, color, national origin, age, or marital status of its clients.
• ABBA does not recommend, provide, or refer for abortion or abortifacients.
• ABBA offers assistance free of charge at all times.
• ABBA is committed to creating an awareness within the local community of the needs of pregnant women, and of the fact that abortion only compounds human need rather than resolving it.
• ABBA does not recommend, provide, or refer single women for contraceptives. (Married women seeking contraceptive information are urged to seek counsel, along with their husbands, from their pastor and physician.)
• ABBA recognizes the validity of adoption as an alternative to abortion, but is not biased toward adoption when compared to the other life-saving alternatives. ABBA interacting with independent adoption agencies shall assure that referrals are made in a manner that fully protects the interests of clients and avoids any conflicts of interest.

Policy Statement on Abortion

Abortion, in distinction from miscarriage, is the intentional killing of an unborn child between conception and birth. We believe that women who have had abortions are left with physical, emotional and spiritual vulnerability. Women need to be educated on the truth of abortion procedures and the resulting consequences to her and her baby.

One of the prime arguments used by pro-abortion or pro-choice advocates in attempting to justify abortion on demand are the so called "special cases". These include:

pregnancy due to rape or incest;
indications of a defective or deformed baby;
the pregnancy threatening the life of the mother.

The ABBA Ministry holds the view of human life as presented clearly in God's Word to man, the Bible.

• A human being exists when God creates him at conception, not at some later point when he has grown to look like a new born or has taken his first breath of air. Psalm 139:13-16
• God is intimately involved with the development of the baby in his mother's womb. Job 3:1-15; Psalm 119:73; Isaiah 44:2
• Our personal identity is continuous from the moment of conception. Matthew 1:20,21
• God deals sovereignly and personally with us as human beings not only after our birth, but prior to birth as well. Genesis 25:23; Jeremiah 1:5; Luke 1:15
• Mankind is clearly distinguished from the rest of creation as being made "in the image of God." Genesis 1:26-28

Thus, we believe that every human, from the moment of conception, is a sovereign act of God, a unique person, separate from his mother, created in God's image. It is because of this clear teaching of the Bible concerning the sanctity of human life and when it begins that we take the following stand on "special cases":

Pregnancy due to rape or incest

The intent and moral status of the act of intercourse does not alter the value of the conception that may result. Woman in these circumstances need extraordinary care, support and encouragement. Destroying her baby through abortion will not relieve her feelings of degradation and trauma. Abortion will bring no peace of mind and no healing. We should not add the guilt of killing her unborn baby together with already difficult circum-stances. And, the sanctity of the life of her unborn baby transcends the shame and emotional disruption of the circumstances.

Indications of a defective or deformed baby

Like rape or incest, the prospect of giving birth to a child who will be mentally or physically disabled presents families with a social and moral dilemma that, on the surface, would seem unbearable. Nevertheless, God is sovereign and He makes the imperfect just as He makes the perfect. We as His stewards, have no more right to destroy the imperfect than we have the right to destroy the perfect.

Threatened life of the mother

This special case is one in which the mother's very life is threatened by the continued existence of a pregnancy. It is posed as a question of one life or the other. One is led to believe that this is an ethical question faced regularly by physicians and parents. Actually, such a situation is extremely rare in today's world. Advances in medical technology and in the knowledge and treatment of pregnancy complication have carried us to the point where almost any pregnancy can be carried to term or to the point where successful premature delivery can be accomplished.

In those instances when a pregnancy must be ended in order to save the life of the mother, the physician would recognize his/her obligation to care for two patients, both mother and child, and all efforts should be directed toward this end. Sometimes the pregnancy-related condition (cancerous uterus, and injured uterus, an ectopic pregnancy -gestation outside of the uterus, often in the fallopian tube) requires surgery so early that the baby is incapable of survival outside the womb. On the other hand, the pregnancy-related condition precludes the child's survival within the womb as well. The choice facing the physician is not to save the mother or to save the child. Rather, it is to save the mother or lose both the mother and child.