How West Virginia’s CICADA Center Combats Anti-Abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers

“That’s actually where the bell choir practices,” Margaret Chapman Pomponio said, gesturing toward a screen divider that partitioned the room.

Yes, it was a tour of a church’s multipurpose space, but it was also something far more unique: a tour of West Virginia’s first reproductive freedom resource center.

Designed to combat anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers, the CICADA Center offers stigma-free care to pregnant and parenting people. They also provide free menstrual products, pregnancy tests, diapers, baby supplies, and more.

CICADA is one of a handful of affirming alternatives to fake clinics across the country. In 2022, after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Arkansas Abortion Support Network founded the Y.O.U. Center. In Indiana, Tandem distributes free maternity clothes, diapers, toys, and more.

Notably, none claim to offer medical care from unqualified staff: You won’t find unlicensed volunteers dressed in lab coats. Instead, abortion-affirming centers offer resources free from the stigma and disinformation that Crisis Pregnancy Centers provide.

“We believe in the dignity of each person, in their autonomy,” Chapman Pomponio said. “We do it all without bias and judgment.”

The acronym CICADA stands for Compassionate, Informed, Caring, Accessible, Dignified, and Autonomous. In other words, this pregnancy care center is everything that a Crisis Pregnancy Center is not, with one exception: It’s housed in a church.

St. John’s Episcopal Church of Charleston, a progressive congregation with a longstanding commitment to reproductive rights, welcomed West Virginia Focus: Reproductive Education and Equity (WV FREE) to open CICADA after what Chapman Pomponio calls “years of dreaming.” Chapman Pomponio is the Executive Director of WV FREE and a parishioner at St. John’s. She said that offering comprehensive options counseling and community-based service felt particularly important to her in a state where abortion is completely banned.

The space itself is incredible. Plush with places to sit and chock-full of resources, CICADA has everything from a kid’s play area to a private room for options counseling. In the distance, flanked by two more church steeples, we could just make out the office of WV FREE.

Although CICADA is physically in a church, Chapman Pomponio made it clear that the center is not religiously affiliated. The center’s founders didn’t want community members thinking of CICADA as a center for proselytization when it’s the opposite: a place where pregnant people can feel empowered to direct their bodies and lives without religious overreach.

Despite the challenges, Chapman Pomponio always hoped to house CICADA in a church. The center opened in March, and already, visitors have remarked on the shock of seeing abortion resources in a religious institution. Chapman Pomponio seeks to “counter the narrative that if you were Christian, you had to be anti-abortion.”

St. John’s is no stranger to reproductive justice. The late Reverend Jim Lewis, who served as rector from 1974 to 1982, was one of the courageous members of the Clergy Consultation Service, a religious network that referred people to abortion care before Roe v. Wade.

Today, WV FREE and Catholics for Choice belong to the Renewed Clergy Consultation Service, an effort to equip modern faith leaders with skills in the post-Dobbs landscape.

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Chapman Pomponio said that through Rev. Jim Lewis, “her work influenced her faith.” Rev. Lewis passed away in April, just weeks after the loss of another Clergy Consultation Service member, Carl Boaz, a board member of Faith Roots New Mexico.

A fresh format for a new generation, CICADA Center provides transparent and evidence-based care in a brick-and-mortar facility. During our tour, a CICADA Center staff member walked in, hoisting a plastic bag and trumpeting that someone had “won 70 bucks at poker night, so he walked to the store and bought 70 bucks worth of baby stuff!” Laughing, Chapman Pomponio told me that the center accepts donations of items through its online wish list.

The Clergy Consultation Service, too, was a bright light in times that demanded direct service. Participation in it was not without risk. During a 2025 interview for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, reporter Trey Kay asked Rev. Lewis about the personal and political risks of referring people to abortion care. “Well, it was against the law, first off, in West Virginia,” Rev. Lewis said. “So that was a factor.”

As the leader of an abortion rights organization, Chapman Pomponio is no stranger to risk. “It’s important that we allow ourselves in these nonprofit spaces to take leaps,” Chapman Pomponio said. “To be able to build something beautiful in these times of chaos, destruction, and oppressive forces has been quite the bright light.”

Rev. Jim Lewis is interred in the church’s columbarium. Surrounded by donations from the community housed above a church, Chapman Pomponio said, “Jim is with us still.”