April 18, 2024
When Martha Day began volunteering at a pregnancy center, she came face to face with a need that needed to be met.
Instead of waiting for someone else to step up, she did it herself. And, for that, Day deserves great thanks.
At the pregnancy center, Day saw huge numbers of impoverished mothers-to-be going without prenatal vitamins. She, along with her husband, co-founded The Vitamin Bridge, a nonprofit organization that’s supplying prenatal supplements to 28 organizations that minister to expectant mothers.
“For women who are struggling to put food on the table, buying vitamins just isn’t always an option,” she told The Christian Index.
The goal of the organization is to bridge the gap between the time when women find out they’re pregnant and when they can get signed up for Medicaid benefits to cover the cost of their health care.
Health experts have long stressed the importance of prenatal supplements, especially folic acid and iron, to prevent birth defects and to ensure healthy, full-term deliveries.
As of now, The Vitamin Bridge is providing free vitamins to women’s clinics across Texas as well as in Oklahoma and Georgia. To date, they have delivered more than 27,000 bottles of prenatal vitamins free of charge to women who can’t afford them.
The work of The Vitamin Bridge will become even more important in helping expectant mothers if Roe v. Wade is struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, as is expected sometime this month. Such a ruling from the Supreme Court would mean, more pregnancies going to full term and more babies being born.
Churches will be needed more than ever to help the mothers-to-be, including with vitamins. They can do that by helping support The Vitamin Bridge.
Perhaps you’ve seen other needs going unmet in your own community. If so, listen to what Day has to say:
“My encouragement and advice to others would be, if you see a need, try to do something about it. Ask yourself the question, ‘what can I do?’ Explore it. Don’t ignore it. Do something about it.”
