Comstock's magazine 1119 - November 2019 | Page 93

CAPITAL REGION CARES
COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
S acramento L ife C enter
Embracing lives one pregnancy at a time.
S
acramento Life Center offers a comprehensive array of
resources and services to Sacramento-area women and teen
girls, especially those who are pregnant with nowhere to turn.
“It’s critical that our services are free because financial strain is
one of the primary reasons so many pregnant women are in crisis,”
notes Marie Leatherby, executive director.
Since its inception in 1972, SLC has served 50,000 women
and today serves about 2,000 women per year. “Of the women
we serve, 95 percent are low-income,” says Leatherby. “They’re
struggling to make ends meet, so we connect them with resources
such as food, clothing, shelter, medical care and more.”
SLC’s two licensed community clinics, the Sacramento Valley
Pregnancy Clinic and their Mobile Medical Clinic, are based in
Sacramento’s Arden area, which has become California’s fastest
growing low-income area. “Our numbers of women served have
gone up 30 percent in the last couple of years,” Leatherby says.
Services offered at no charge under the direction and
supervision of a licensed physician include pregnancy tests, STD
tests, ultrasounds, patient advocacy and more.
SLC calculates that each woman served receives about $1,000
worth of medical services and material needs. As this non-profit
is 100 percent privately funded, they encourage businesses,
foundations and individuals to sponsor any individual woman in
their care or to sponsor their baby baskets with critical baby care
supplies for those women.
“So many women would like to parent, to be mothers, but it’s
financially daunting and, unfortunately, there are many messages
in society that they shouldn’t go through with a pregnancy. Women
with unplanned pregnancies really need the community’s help
and support to see their pregnancies through, and we invite our
community to help us help them.”
SACLIFE.ORG
November 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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