The Sunshine State’s first-ever Jewish crisis pregnancy center is coming to Davie, a city of 110,000, located near Fort Lauderdale.
The group behind the effort is Efrat, founded in 1977 in Jerusalem by surgeon Dr. Eli Schussheim.
"What we're trying to do,” Nir Salomon, executive director of Efrat, says, “is to stand alongside our Christian friends and the pro-life movement, from the U.S. and service communities, which have large Jewish population where Jews might feel more comfortable in it.”
The Jewish population along Florida’s East Coast is substantial, estimated to be more than a half-million Jews. So Efrat sees a unique opportunity to reach Jewish women and girls in crisis who have emotional, financial, and medical needs.
The most common reason females give for choosing abortion is the financial burden of raising a child, so Efrat’s new facility will provide housing for women and their newborns as they start motherhood.
The new center, which plans to be operational by the end of the year, will also offer counseling, medical referrals, and baby care supplies.
The organization’s founder, Dr. Schussheim, formed the organization after he stitched up an 8-year-old boy who had been brought to the hospital by his mother. After the mother recognized the surgeon, she reminded him he had once reassured her an X-ray she received would not harm the baby in her womb.
Convinced to carry the child to term, she told Dr. Schussheim the little boy in front of him was alive because of that life-changing conversation.
