Eliana was 43-years-old with three adult children when she discovered that she was pregnant. She had envisioned a different life — a life where she traveled the world with her boyfriend — and so she tried to get an abortion. Twice.
But, each time, something stopped her. Whenever she picked up the phone to schedule an abortion, she remembered a lecture she once heard as a teenager by Dr. Eli Schussheim, the founder of EFRAT, an Israel-based nonprofit that helps pregnant and parenting women in need.
Dr. Schussheim, a physician and surgeon, began EFRAT in 1977 after realizing that a second opinion he gave to one mother saved her baby boy’s life. Today, his pro-life nonprofit envisions “a world where every woman who wants to have her baby, can.” EFRAT, so far, has empowered more than 88,000 women in need to choose life by providing emotional, financial, medical, physical and even vocational support.
While the organization is Jewish, EFRAT serves all women who turn to them for help. The organization, first and foremost, wants women to know: “You are not alone.”
As executive director of EFRAT, Nir Salomon shared the story of Eliana, a Jewish woman whose name has been changed for this story, with Our Sunday Visitor. The lecture she heard by Dr. Schussheim, he said, was about the development of the unborn baby.
“She says, ‘Wait a second. I can’t take the life of my child,'” Salomon said.
Eliana was confused, he added, because she wanted an abortion. She decided to pray and ask God for a sign. She immediately spotted one: After praying, a bus displaying an EFRAT sign passed by.
“She said, ‘God, I got it. I got my sign, I’ll keep the baby,'” he said.
At the time, she wasn’t happy about it, he said. And, when her baby was born, she wondered, “How am I going to mother, now, a young child? I really wanted to now have my second life.”
A second life saved
More than a year later, Eliana came to a new realization after facing a horrific loss. Her adult daughter had attended the Tribe of Nova trance music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, where terrorist attacks that began the ongoing Israel-Hamas war took place. She didn’t survive.
“Then she woke up,” Salomon said of Eliana, “and she realized, ‘God didn’t send this baby that I should save his life. He sent this baby to save my life.'”
After her daughter’s death, all she wanted to do was hide under the blankets and die, he said. But something stopped her: She had a baby to take care of and live for.
Eliana later reached out to EFRAT, told them her story, and stressed that every decision has consequences. If a woman faces an unplanned pregnancy, there’s a reason for that, she said.
“God doesn’t make women pregnant for no reason,” Salomon said of her message. “It has to be a blessing, and this is the blessing of my child.”
Abortion in Israel
All of the women helped by EFRAT decide to keep their babies, Salomon said, adding that, when a woman is given a real choice, she usually chooses life.
“It’s really just showing love and support and telling a woman, ‘You’re not alone,'” Salomon said. “However, in order to tell a woman you’re not alone, you really need to be there for her. It can’t just be just a slogan.”
Today, the nonprofit has a presence around the world, including in the United States. The organization recognizes that women often end their pregnancies due to financial stress.
“In principle, people in Israel are life-affirming,” Salomon said. “However, when a woman is in distress, she chooses things that otherwise she wouldn’t have done.”
According to the Israeli government, a woman in Israel must go through an application process before obtaining a legal abortion. She can seek an abortion, which must be approved by a “pregnancy termination board” for any of the following reasons: if she’s under 18 or over 40, if she is pregnant as the result of unlawful sex such as rape or incest, if the pregnancy could endanger her life or cause her physical or psychological harm, if she’s unmarried or became pregnant outside of marriage, or if the unborn baby may have a physical or mental defect.
Special permission is needed after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
According to government reports, abortion is declining in Israel. For the year 2022, the most recent year listed with data available, there were 17,123 applications for abortion submitted, with 16,950 approved. Of those, 15,855 abortions took place, making up an abortion rate of 7.2 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age.
In the United States for the year 2023, more than one million abortions happened within the formal health-care system, translating to a rate of 15.9 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, according to a policy analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive research organization that supports abortion,
There are also reports of thousands of illegal abortions taking place in Israel. Online, EFRAT estimates that 35,000 abortions total are performed each year.
A choice to choose life
To offer women the choice to choose life, EFRAT provides financial support (general baby supplies and equipment, including a monthly package of basic baby products for the first two years of a baby’s life and monthly food packages), counseling, vocational counseling, medical consultations, and, soon, rent-free safe housing for women who are homeless before and after birth. They also engage in advocacy and public awareness.
“We’ll provide for a woman who is poverty stricken or has considered terminating her pregnancy because of a lack of finances,” Salomon said. “We’ll provide her things like a crib, a carriage, a baby bath, clothing, diapers for two years, basic baby formula for the child, everything the baby needs, so she can make her decision with joy, comfort and ease.”
They also rely on a network of more than 150 volunteers.
When a woman reaches out to them, Salomon said, they usually pair her with a volunteer that has had a similar story, lives in her area and has a similar background. The volunteer befriends her and talks to her.
“We don’t come and antagonize her, we don’t tell her it should be prohibited, we just tell her, ‘Listen to your inner self and make a decision,'” Salomon said of the women who come to them. “In order to listen to your inner self, sometimes you need to not be under pressure.”
EFRAT, he said, alleviates that pressure.
A partnership with Christian pregnancy centers
The nonprofit also works to educate people, Salomon said. He revealed that they are partnering with Christian pregnancy centers to empower even more women.
If a Jewish woman enters a Christian pregnancy center, EFRAT will step in to help her if she wants — and vice versa.
“What we think is, we have to give every woman the environment she feels comfortable in,” he said. “But any woman who would come to us, [we] would obviously be there for her.”
He saw a “lot of ways to work together with our Christian friends in order to cherish life.”
A celebration of life
EFRAT takes its name from Miriam, who is also known as “Efrat,” one of the midwives in Egypt during the time of Moses, when the pharaoh decreed that the baby boys of the enslaved Jews should be killed.
These midwives, Salomon said, risked their lives to save the babies and comforted the mothers who were scared. Today, Efrat does the same, he said.
“We’re there to comfort these women, that they should know that God is with them in their deliberations, in their time of difficulty and we’ll be there to help them,” he said. “We’re honored to be God’s outstretched arms, so to speak, to provide financial support and emotional support. But it’s really God blessing them from above.”
He encouraged people to celebrate life.
“The celebration of life is what needs to be focused on today in a world that is so involved in war and so involved, unfortunately, in killing,” he said.
As for Eliana, Salomon said that EFRAT keeps in touch with her. One day, she hopes to speak about her story herself.
“She’s an inspiration and, God willing, she’ll inspire a lot of other women to just rethink their decisions,” Salomon said. “It’s easy to decide to have an abortion. It’s not easy to live with it.”
