This interview originally appeared in the Thomas More Society 2025 Impact Report. To explore the full Impact Report, click here.

TMS: Tell us about yourself and what drew you to pregnancy center work.

Pasha Bohlen: I’ve been a nurse for 38 years and have worked at pregnancy resource centers since 2002—with 20 years now at PAI. I grew up Islamic, became a Christian, and an evangelist at our church encouraged us to ask God what He would have us to do as a career. I prayed about it, and I felt like the Lord told me to be a nurse. It was in my last year in nursing school, I was listening to a show about abortion… It actually brought me to tears. And it just hit me—I was like, that’s why He wants me to be a nurse. I worked in community health with high-risk moms and moms that were considering abortion. In 2002 is when I actually first called a center and they were looking for nurses. Once I started there, I knew that that’s really why He called me to be a nurse. I really found my home.

TMS: When you’re in the ultrasound room with a woman weighing her options, how do you see your role?

PB: I feel like every appointment is a divine appointment. We tell people right off, we don’t do abortions and we don’t refer for abortions. We don’t believe in bait-and-switch. Most women don’t know what abortion entails. Even if they’ve had one, they don’t really know what happens to them, what really happens to the baby—that it really is a baby. That’s where the ultrasound comes in. They actually see their live baby on the screen. They see the heartbeat. If they’re at least nine weeks, they see the baby actively moving. When you see something, you can’t unsee what you’ve seen. You can’t unhear what you heard. You know it’s human. You know it’s a life. It puts you in a whole different mindset.

“You can’t unsee what you’ve seen. You can’t unhear what you heard. You know it’s human. You know it’s a life.”

TMS: You testified about a grandmother who saw her grandchild on ultrasound and recalled aborting a child at about the same gestational age. Why was that story important to share in court?

PB: The grandmother really didn’t know. She didn’t know that 20 years previously, when she had an abortion at nine weeks, that it was actually a baby. She thought it was just a clump of tissue. When she sees her grandchild on the ultrasound screen—this nine-week baby with a heartbeat, and you can clearly see head, arms, legs—she came to the reality that she aborted a baby. It wasn’t a clump of tissue. She saw the truth for the first time. She made the right decision and said, “I’m going to help my daughter to keep my grandbaby, that she won’t make the mistake that I made.” Her daughter wasn’t being deceived. She was deceived. She wasn’t given the truth. Now she saw the truth on the ultrasound screen with her grandchild, and the good news is her grandchild would live.

TMS: Illinois’ referral mandate remains. What would you do if it’s enforced?

PB: I can’t, in good faith, give a woman an abortion clinic and say, “You want an abortion, this is where you can go.” It’s making us go against our very beliefs and the beliefs of the Bible, and that’s why we’re fighting it. The reality is, she can pull out her phone and say, “Abortion clinic near me,” and Planned Parenthood or some other clinic will come up. She doesn’t need me for that.

TMS: What would you say to people who want to support the work of pregnancy centers like PAI?

PB: I would encourage people to become an active part of the ministry—whether it’s as a volunteer or as a donor or just telling people that the services exist. Hardly a week goes by that I have a client come in who had no idea that pregnancy centers existed. There are still so many people that don’t know. If they can get to one of our locations, we can service them. We service everybody.

TMS: What gives you hope as you look ahead?

PB: I always have hope when a client comes in that’s very abortion-minded, and we’re able to give her the truth, give her resources, give her support, and she sees that there is hope, there is a way, and there are people that really care about her. When you see that woman change her mind and decide to keep her baby, to me, that’s a miracle. And we see that on a regular basis. I think the women that make the decision to have an abortion, they make it because they think there are no options. There’s no one that really cares. And then for her to find out that there are whole ministries here just to service you and your baby—and they don’t want anything from you—that God has made a way for you and for your baby and for your family. I see it make a difference.