Panelists lauded the resources available to pregnant students at Georgetown Monday night at a Pregnancy Forum sponsored by GU Right to Life. More than 30 students attended the event. .The event featured a panel with representatives from Health Services, the Campus Ministry and off-campus pregnancy centers.

Nikki Callahan, the college outreach program coordinator at Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion advocacy group, opened the discussion by asking the panelists a series of questions about what services were available to pregnant students on campus and which of those could be improved upon.

Overall, Callahan called Georgetown a “model university” in terms of services and support for pregnant students and young mothers, and encouraged the university to further publicize its resources. She said that the Pregnancy Forum, in its sixth year at Georgetown, was a highly beneficial event.

“Tomorrow there will be women and children on campus who will benefit from what you learned today,” she said.

Carol Day, director of Health Services at Georgetown, said that free tests were available at Health Services, and that the student health insurance provided for prenatal care.

Day said that students could remain in residence halls until the baby was born, and after that they have the option of living in an endowment-sponsored townhouse off campus.

Kara Crawford, a representative of the Northwest Pregnancy Center, spoke of the resources available at her center, including pregnancy testing, prenatal care and references for students seeking counseling and medical services.

Anne Elisabeth Giuliani, a Chaplain-in-Residence in Village C East, said that members of Campus Ministry are always available to provide confidential and spiritual counsel to any students in their time of need, especially during an unexpected pregnancy.

“We are aware of the feelings of being trapped,” she said. “We try to help people objectivize things and get the facts . There’s not just a huge wall.”

She said that sometimes young men who are “in a state of panic” also seek the counsel of the Campus Ministry.

The discussion turned to focus on daycare services for new mothers once their baby is born. Though day said Hoya Kids, the university-run daycare center, does not admit babies under 18 months of age, GU Right to Life offers free childcare services and Crawford spoke about the Gabriel Project, a local program which offers homes and volunteer babysitting services for new mothers.

Day said that the university was working to arrange a parking spot or a subsidized parking arrangement for student mothers on campus.

Callahan said there are still areas in which the university can improve its resources for pregnant students. For example, she said, the university does not have diaper decks or chairs for nursing mothers in most bathrooms and desks are not always accommodating in size for expectant mothers.

The panelists also discussed issues including financial aid and educational arrangements that could be made for expectant student mothers during and after their pregnancy.

Callahan recommended that tape recorders or volunteer note-takers be provided so that pregnant students could get notes if they had to leave for medical reasons.

At one point during the forum, a student in the audience raised a concern over the Health Services’ health hotline, recounting an experience where she claimed the pager system, which is supposed to be accessible 24-hours a day, was inaccessible. The student said that officials that she had talked to at Health Services were rude and unhelpful when she had inquired about other options surrounding pregnancy.

Day responded by saying that Health Services always tries to be accessible to all students.

“It’s too bad that anyone is ever rude or judgmental,” she said.

Laura Peirson (COL ’05), the president of GU Right to Life said that she felt the event had encouraged dialogue and informed students well.

“[The event] definitely sparked a dialogue in terms of the resources that Georgetown has and things that could be improved on,” she said.

Peirson said that she felt that the girl’s experience with the telephone hotline was unfortunate, and she hoped that events like the Forum could build on that negative experience.

“If [a woman is] pregnant, she needs to know that the support services are there, emotionally and materially, so that she doesn’t feel alone in the challenges that she’ll face,” Peirson said.