{"id":97231,"date":"2026-04-25T10:07:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T10:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/nebraska-pro-life-ministry-brings-ultrasound-to-classrooms-across-america\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T10:08:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T10:08:30","slug":"nebraska-pro-life-ministry-brings-ultrasound-to-classrooms-across-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/nebraska-pro-life-ministry-brings-ultrasound-to-classrooms-across-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Nebraska pro-life ministry brings ultrasound to classrooms across America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

On the 2012 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, during a holy hour, Nikki Schaefer and her 7-year-old daughter, Grace, were inspired to start a simple ministry of selling hand-stitched pro-life pillows to raise money for pregnancy centers. Today, Heart of a Children’s Ministries<\/a> Fetal development education programs in K-12 classrooms across the country have been expanded.<\/p>\n

Schaefer told EWTN News that initial sales of the ministry’s pro-life pillows raised nearly $40,000 shortly after they launched. \u201cWith pillow sales, we were featured in an article, and so the first invitations to schools started coming in 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n

“So, we’ve been in schools for 11 years,” Schaefer said. \u201cSince that first presentation, all kinds of things have come up: we’ve presented in eight different states, we’ve been all over the state of Nebraska, we’ve developed a K-4 Celebration of Life program, a fifth through sixth program, a middle school and a high school program and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in Omaha, Nebraska, Heart of a Child Ministries is growing into a multistate presence, with two new embryo certified teachers in Illinois, one to be trained in Springfield and another in Mokena in October. The organization now also has certified teachers in Alabama and Idaho. <\/p>\n

Fetal development education for every level<\/h2>\n

Heart of a Child brings live ultrasound into fetal development education classrooms in a way that is specifically tailored to each grade level. According to Schaefer, its K-4 program focuses on “fun embryological facts for kids” and includes “all kinds of practical things”, such as a team of musicians who play songs. \u201cThe kids absolutely love it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe’re just keeping the joy of life in front of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Schaefer, laying the foundation for a K-4 program is important. “It really solidifies the agreement \u2014 it puts the truth in their hearts right from the beginning so that when the lies start coming in in middle school through social media, through their friends, they’ve already seen the ultrasound; they’ve already learned all the amazing facts about what’s going on.”<\/p>\n

Through middle school, the curriculum progresses with more detailed fetal development facts, adoption stories and begins to address the issue of abortion. In high school, live ultrasound and fetal development education is complemented with more detailed information about abortion, a testimonial speaker, and a panel discussion.<\/p>\n

This format was used at the ministry’s first college event, sponsored by Turning Point USA, on March 30. The event took place at Northeast Community College in Norfolk, Nebraska, and included a panel of two OB-GYN doctors, a representative for Abortion Pill Reversal (APR), Teresa Kenney, host of the Hormone Genius podcast, and other pro-life experts.<\/p>\n

“We believe that when kids walk away from this, their hearts are changed, their hearts are moved, and we have the data to prove it,” Schaefer said.<\/p>\n

Schaefer emphasized that the core of the program’s success is its holistic approach, recognizing that each child processes information differently depending on age, personality, and maturity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work we do is so important because it impacts kids on so many different levels,\u201d she said. “Some kids are more logical, right? They want the facts. Some kids are more heartfelt. They want to hear a testimonial from someone who had an abortion, and it had an impact on them. That’s what will touch their heart.”<\/p>\n

9 Month School for 9 Month Pregnancy<\/h2>\n

In addition to its latest multistate expansion, Heart of a Child has also launched a fetal development curriculum for teachers to implement in their classrooms throughout the year.<\/p>\n

Entitled “The Journey Within,” the teacher-led curriculum takes students through nine months of pregnancy during the nine months of the school year with posters, fetal development PowerPoints, ultrasound videos, studies, and images of babies in the womb.<\/p>\n

Schaefer said a version of the curriculum is available to both public and Catholic schools and has been vetted by a medical panel for accuracy.<\/p>\n

“For Catholic schools, we have a spiritual component where teachers do a Scripture reading or Church teaching every month, and kids reflect on that, write about it and go deeper,” he said. The faith-based curriculum operates under the “4S Model” which includes scripture, science, stories, and service. Each faith-based school that Heart of a Child presents presents a service project to complete, such as raising money to purchase diapers for pro-life pregnancy centers.<\/p>\n

Schaefer emphasized the importance of fetal development curriculum today, noting that “the buzz right now in pro-life education and the pro-life movement in general is that various states have passed a law to require fetal development education.”<\/p>\n

States that have laws requiring fetal development education in public schools include Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, Indiana, West Virginia, Iowa, and Ohio. Lobbying efforts to pass similar legislation in Nebraska have not yet been successful, Schaefer said, citing the difficulty in finding senators willing to prioritize a bill with precise language.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been meeting with senators, and unfortunately the bill they came up with had the ability for Planned Parenthood to go in there and do fetal development education because it was so loose,” he said. “So we recommended senators go back and redo the language, and maybe require some fetal development programs in the state of Nebraska.”<\/p>\n

Nebraska Governor Jim Pilen has indicated his support for efforts to pass legislation requiring education on fetal development in Nebraska public schools, telling EWTN News in an interview earlier this year: “I’m 100% behind it and support it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the 2012 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, during a holy hour, Nikki Schaefer and her 7-year-old daughter, Grace, were inspired to start a simple ministry of selling hand-stitched pro-life pillows to raise money for pregnancy centers. Today, Heart of a Children’s Ministries Fetal development education programs in K-12 classrooms across the country have been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[445,4154,8891,2933,162,665,25459],"class_list":{"0":"post-97231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-news","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-brings","10":"tag-classrooms","11":"tag-ministry","12":"tag-nebraska","13":"tag-prolife","14":"tag-ultrasound"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97233,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97231\/revisions\/97233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}