Hector Juarez loves to ask men and women coming out of the ultrasound room at Hope Pregnancy Center (HPC) in Ontario what they just saw.
“Many times, they are emotional, and they come back and say, ‘This changes everything,’” says Juarez, the center’s director since 2018. “Even though this area is very rural, with our population being just over 11,000, we’ve had over 25,000 client visits and performed around 860 ultrasounds. We have seen God use us to minister to so many people.”
The center opened in 1986 and has been at its third and current location on 6th Street in the Oregon border town since 2010. HPC offers free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, pregnancy counseling to discuss the family’s options, community education, maternity and baby gear, STD testing and resource referrals.
“We’re dealing with a life-and-death issue here, because humans are made in the image of God,” Juarez says. “The world is really good at shutting the opposition down and calling us names, but human life is a gift from our maker.”
It’s a very personal issue to Juarez, who paid for the abortion of his own child when he was a teenager.
“It broke my heart for many years, and it wasn’t until Christ found me that that area of my life was redeemed,” he says. “When I started at Hope Pregnancy Center meeting with men through the men’s ministry before I became the director, I felt this very intimate connection because I could see myself in them.”
HPC is minutes away from Idaho, a state that effectively banned abortion (with exceptions to save the mother’s life or in cases of rape and incest) in 2022 after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That means that a significant number of pregnant Idahoans will travel to Oregon, one of the most abortion-friendly states in the nation, to abort their children. HPC has seen a 41 percent increase in abortion-minded or abortion-vulnerable clients, in fact, since the Dobbs decision that returned abortion regulation to individual states. Juarez says that many Idaho clients come to Ontario looking for an abortion, scared of Idaho laws or simply confused.
“Yesterday, we had a female client come who drove from Idaho, intending to get an abortion in Oregon,” Juarez says. “Thankfully, somebody intervened and encouraged her not to go through with it. She is still very abortion-minded, but we offered her an ultrasound and had staff meet and pray with her.”
To adapt to Oregon’s “abortion tourism” realities, Juarez says that HPC is looking to expand its hours, client services (including hiring another nurse for sonography), online advertising and influence with local churches and community stakeholders in the very near future. Since 2010, at least 161 babies have been saved from abortion because of HPC’s services — but Juarez and his team want that number to massively increase.
“We’re giving these women and families more information about their child, about their options, about the laws,” Juarez says. “We’re delivering compassionate care, because we’re not just trying to promote a pro-life message, but an abundant pro-life message.”
For more information, visit hpcontario.com or call 541-889-4272.
