Abortion opponents who run the St. Gianna Molla Pregnancy Outreach Center were networking and raising money Tuesday night at Cheektowaga's Millennium Hotel with New York State's new Reproductive Health Act, signed into law in January, inspiring pro-life advocates.
What began as one small building near St. Joseph's Cathedral downtown is now five locations across the Buffalo Catholic Diocese. St. Gianna Molla was an Italian doctor who died when faced with a pregnancy and a tumor. She refused an abortion, had the child and died of post-operative complications.
For Dr. Hope Woodroffe, life is an important issue as local OB-GYN. Woodroffe said the state's new Reproductive Health Act has galvanized the pro-life movement.
"What Albany has done has woken a lot of people up and made us much more unified and vocal as a movement," she said. "I'm an OB-GYN, so I talk with pregnant women, all day, every day, and women who aren't pregnant, as well, and have a lot of personal invovement in the medical side of things."
Woodroffe said she is "grieved that the State of New York has chosen not to support women who are choosing life for their babies," passage of the new law has "started a lot of conversations that haven't been happening in the past."
