08-26-25 Interview - Ashley Graves - There Are Alternatives to Planned Parenthood

In the studio with me now is the executive director of an organization that I want you to pay attention to because we've talked about on the show before that Colorado, like it or not, is a pro choice state.

Okay, full stop.

There's no polling day to the shows that it is anything but a majority pro choice state. Does that mean if your pro life you should just throw in the towel and just call it a day.

No, it doesn't.

But it means that any time energy or effort you spend trying to limit abortion in Colorado is going to be wasted.

The only way to.

Limit abortion in Colorado is to give women an alternative that would support them in a pregnancy that maybe they were not prepared for. And that's why I have Ashley Graves in the studio with me right now from Alternatives Pregnancy Center.

First of all, Ashley, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.

Well, I'm glad to have you, and I honestly vaguely familiar with the Alternatives Pregnancy Center, mostly because things that listeners have sent me. We have people that are listening audience, we have a lot of pro choice people are at our listening audience. We have a lot of pro life people in our listening audience, and even I would think that a vast majority of the pro choice people in this listening audience would love to think that when truly do have a choice right, that it's not just the

You guys do a whole bunch of stuff. Tell me about that absolutely.

So we walk beside women and men that find themselves in the complexity of an unplaned pregnancy. And like our doctor's appointments are our nurse appointments, they're an hour long. When was the last time you went to a doctor and you got an hour long appointment? And we sit with them and we look at the whole human being, the whole person mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. What is going on? How can we walk with them? We show

The other thing that honestly.

A lot of pro choice people have supported is we walk beside them till the baby's a year old. We do mentoring, We have fatherhood mentoring. Wow, like that's been huge. And then we also have counseling after abortion, and that those pieces, even pro choice people can't be upset about because we're still walking with these individuals.

We don't drop them off.

We still love on them, and if they choose to have an abortion, we still love them. We want them to have counseling, healing all of them.

You have them to be making an informed choice, absolutely, and that is something And I've never had to make this decision, and I'm very grateful that I never found myself in this position. But boy do I know a lot of women that have found themselves in this position. And in my friend group, I have women who have made all different choices. I have had women who decided, I'm gonna have this baby, I'm gonna keep this baby.

Didn't feel like they had a choice, and they maybe didn't feel like there's someone to listen or someone to talk out the process with, or maybe even ten years down the road, did they find someone to talk with.

Because I was of advanced maternal age when I had my daughter, and my husband was five years older than I was. In our first meeting with our midwife, they said, okay, do you want to do genetic testing? And I said, well, you know, I in the course of this, if we find out there's something severely wrong, we can talk. But if we have a child with Down syndrome, we've already talked about it because we're older and we're okay with that and we don't want to hear about termination again.

They are not they have and then I've heard recently they're like, ashulely, the tests are better. But a young woman that I've walked beside since she was fifteen years old, she in the last two years got a false positive and I'm like.

They're not that much better. You can't just trust that information.

So yeah, now, when someone comes to the Alternative's pregnancy Center, walk me through that process. I've always thought, and maybe I'm wrong about this, are people that tend to gravitate towards a place called Alternatives Pregnancy Center. Maybe they're already questioning if they're going to walk that path on abortion. Maybe they want to be talked out of it.

Right? Is that accurate? Not always?

Sometimes they come in very determined, like they have already made their mind.

A they want an abortion, Okay.

They come to us, We sit them down and we do a medical grade pregnancy test with our ns, and we talk through what's going on in your life right now? What are you feeling, what is happening? Why are you feeling anxiety about this right now? We find out a lot of information, and it's amazing how often we open the door for additional resources they didn't know they could get. We are experts on what's available in the counties and what resources are available to them.

A lot of them.

It may be I don't have housing, How can I have this baby?

Right?

Let us open the door to some organizations that can help. My partner is abusing me, How can I have this baby? We aren't experts on domestic violence, but we know who is. Yeah, and that is our goal to know who are the experts that can walk with these women and empower them so they don't feel so trapped.

And a lot of people just in general don't recognize or realize how many organizations exist, and our organizations like you that can kind of act as a clearinghouse to help get over some of those big hurdles that people are expressing and truly giving them a choice.

I mean, that's what this is all about.

Because they feel so trapped, right, I mean they feel trapped when they come to see us. Nine out of ten times, if you look at them and say you are not alone, We're here to walk beside you, immediately we see tears.

Yeah, because they feel so alone. Right.

We even help them role play on how to talk to their partner, how to talk to you. We had a situation on how to talk to their parents. We do role playing with them. We just give them the dedicated time they need to process this information. One other thing I didn't mention earlier is we do free STD testing for women as well and treatment, and we follow that up with STD counseling as well to kind of educate and be like, why do we keep getting in this situation?

Right?

What's going on behind you? Coming to see us so often? Not ever a place from judgment. I can never judge anyone, right, but from a place of love and hope. And we want to help you find some answers.

Right right, And you know, I mean ultimately in my mind. And I know it sounds a little patronizing, but helping someone learn how to make better decisions when they've been making the same wrong decision over and over and over again, it's really a powerful medicine in and of itself. Yes, So do you guys also offer well women care and things of that nature?

Or is this we are tilted towards it? Oh, we are.

That is the long term goal. We are heading in that direction. But we are funded by individuals. I am over seventy five percent of our funding comes from individuals and churches. So we do not receive any state or federal funding and that makes it difficult. We have to fund raise.

Why is that, without getting too deep into the weeds on politics stuff, why is it that you do choose not to take federal dollars because of the strings that may be attached, or is it federal dollars are not necessarily flowing towards organizations that are focused on life.

Well, the second one, for sure, they don't have many flowing towards us. But secondly, a lot of times when we apply for those, the second they find out we're pro life, they don't want to work with us. And I would also say a lot of times there's a lot of hoops. I know some organizations that do receive federal and state funding and they actually have to hire another staff just to manage that, just for fulfillment.

And then there's all kinds of every every piece of tax money that is given out comes with strings. Absolutely, and maybe they're they're blatant strings, but maybe they are just pressure, or maybe they're pressure that doesn't even appear for years.

Yes, right as.

Things change or shift.

What are you guys seeing?

And mentioned it right at the beginning of the interview, and I'm talking right now with Ashley Graves from the Alternative's Pregnancy Center. Colorado is a staunchly pro choice state. They have indicated it over and over and over and over and over again at the ballot box.

There's no question about it.

So I have often told my listeners who are frustrated pro lifers who believe that a child is a child, no matter if it's a you know, little tiny zeyegoat child or a nine month old child that's ready to be born. This is the kind of stuff that I would love to have you direct your time and energy and your money to, because the only way to slow down the rate of abortion anywhere is to let women know that there are alternatives.

Absolutely.

You know, what are you guys seeing just on the landscape in terms of you know, do you feel like people's hearts are changing at all? Because I try to gauge it and it's so hard. I want to see the window that I want to see the world through. Right Where are you guys seeing this?

I would say the younger generation behind us is looking at it. My daughter's generation, they're twenty and twenty five. They are seeing some of the after effects of abortion, and especially the chemical abortion, yeah, and the trauma that goes with that, and I think they're going to be the generation to speak up and go, this is not okay. This is actually doing more harm than good. And so that is definitely I think the generations that are getting

It's a very dramatic process, and people think it's no big deal. I'm going to take this, and you know, I don't know what they think is going to happen, but it's a very dramatic process. It's not just a no big deal type thing as it's often made out to be. I don't know, So, Ashley, how did you get into this field?

Honestly, I have always discipled young women. I've always walked beside young women. I don't have the prettiest testimony. I don't have the prettiest backstory, and there wasn't someone to walk with me. And so we ended up in an area and the pregnancy Resource center needed a director and my husband was the one that said, you have to apply for this. This is for young women, this is you. And that's what I love about what we do because to me, it's.

Pro woman right, it's empowering women.

And I was an executive director in Texas for over eight years and then I stepped out and became a consultant to pregnancy resource centers because we were losing so many leaders due to burnout, right exhaustion, all the things. And then a recruiter found me here for Denver and I'm never in a million years thought I would leave Texas for Denver, Colorado. But my husband and I have a saying you go until you get a no, and

That's fantastic. That's absolutely fantastic. You know, when you are talking with young women, and you're obviously talking with young women, maybe not you directly, but the people you have a lot of different counselors and things of that nature. When you're talking to these young women. I mean, I can only imagine the fear that must come across. How do you say to someone, I'm too scared to do this. It's too frightening. There's too many barriers in my way.

We actually say tell us what the obstacles are, so we you will never hear one of our advocates say we think you should do this right, that's never going to come out of our mouth.

But I will say, by and large, we're seeing housing that's a that's the biggest one.

It's probably the largest one of how can I have another child? I'm currently sleeping in my car or I'm sleeping on someone's couch.

How can I have a child?

Housing is a huge one, and so we look into that and we're like, you know what, we partner with some incredible organizations. Let's see if we can help you find how I.

Don't know if you guys partner with Catholic charities, but I've seen their facility that they have for young you know, moms and kids, and they stay for years there until they can really get their feet under them, and it's just such an impressive operation. And all of this stuff kind of flies under the radar. And I think part of it is because unfortunately this is so contentious, right, it shouldn't be. This should be a no brainer, like why shouldn't we want women to have baby? I just

He is going to be here September fourteenth for a gala out at the Gaylord Rockies Convention Center, and we are going to have a live auction. You can even buy table sponsorships to get into a VIP meet and greet with Tim Tebow. And we had someone contact our development director and said, what do I have to do to meet Tim?

He said, well, do I have a package for you?

Yeah, So he will be there on Sunday night for that event, and then the next day we are hosting a golf tournament and he is going to be at Cherry Creek Country Club. They have partnered with us and that's fantastic playing golf. We only have three foursomes still available for that. So the golf tournament is almost sold out, but we still have tables for the galab.

Well, I have all of this information on the blog today.

The gala is Sunday, September fourteenth, so it's in a couple of weeks at six pm at the Gaylord Hotel.

How much your tickets for that?

A table is twenty and twenty two hundred and fifty dollars, an individual seat is two hundred and twenty five.

Okay, so that is for that, and you got four I'm pulling up the fundraising on the website really quick, and you only have four foursomes for the golf Is it three seventy five or person?

Yes? Okay, I'm looking right now. Just makes sure so you probably won't go ahead and do that now.

Yes, if you want to play the golf tournament, Like I said, Tim's going to be walking around, He's going to spend the entire day with us. Get on there today. Let's get it sold out.

I have a couple of people that are texting in right now. By the way, if you love what you're hearing and you want to support this, you can say, set up a five dollars a month donation. You can set up a ten dollar a month donation. You can set up a one time donation for five million dollars. You do whatever you.

Want to do.

I mean, I just feel really good about making that last offer.

In case Steve, I don't think like that. I just want to plant that seed.

So whatever you can do, you can participate, you know, and you could do this, or you could just give a little money. Here's a couple of stories I want to share though. I think it's fascinating. Mandy twenty six years ago, my wife and I were forty years old, found out we were pregnant unplanned. We had an abortion appointment set up in the twelfth hour. I changed my mind and it took a lot of prayers and counsel with my wife to talk or into having the baby.

That baby, because it's really hard.

But it's also unfair because men don't get the really cool stuff about having a baby, little feet kicking from the inside. Dude, there's literally nothing in the world like it. It's amazing. But men should also get a say.

Well, and I can speak to in my previous clinic, there was one summer we had three young men different pregnancy tests. All three of them were literally wailing in our waiting room because she was determined to get an abortion and he had no rights. He offered to support, he offered to provide a place to live, he offered for his parents to do it. In all three incidences, and a man has literally no say.

That's just really, really sad it is.

Alternatives Pregnancy Center is the place you want to put a link to all of this on the blog today.

Thank you. You guys are going to.

Have an amazing event. Emma tell Tim, I said, Hi, I will