Free Pregnancy Resources in Hawthorne, NJ | Inside Lighthouse PRC
If you're searching for a free pregnancy test or ultrasound in Hawthorne, NJ, Lighthouse Pregnancy Resource Center at 297 Lafayette Ave has been serving Passaic and Bergen County families with no-cost, confidential care for 40 years — and the depth of what they offer goes far beyond a pregnancy test.
What Is Lighthouse Pregnancy Resource Center?
Lighthouse Pregnancy Resource Center is a nonprofit organization with four locations across North Jersey — Hawthorne, Hackensack, Paterson, and Wayne — that provides free, confidential services to anyone facing an unplanned pregnancy or related concern. Founded in 1984, the center has grown from a small operation in the back of a church to a 10,000+ square-foot headquarters in Hawthorne, staffed by 26 employees and more than 150 volunteers.
Debbie Provencher, the executive director who has led Lighthouse for the past 20 years, recently gave a tour of the Hawthorne center to a group of local community partners. What followed was an honest, detailed, and often moving look at what it takes to support someone at one of the most vulnerable points of their life — and what 40 years of consistent, faith-driven community investment actually looks like from the inside.
Debbie has led Lighthouse since 2006, growing the organization from a part-time operation to a 4-location nonprofit with 26 staff.
A 40-Year Origin Story Built on One Step at a Time
Lighthouse didn't start with a strategic plan. It was founded by a grandfather in Hawthorne who opened the phone book, noticed the largest ads were for abortion providers, and felt called to create an alternative. He talked to his pastor. His pastor said, "Maybe you're supposed to do something." A small group of friends got together and built what would eventually become Lighthouse.
When Debbie stepped in as director in 2006, the organization was still modest — a part-time director who came in when appointments were scheduled, a small borrowed space, and limited community visibility. Her public relations background wasn't an obvious fit for a pregnancy center, but it turned out to be exactly what the organization needed.
"I just kept taking one step of faith at a time," Debbie said. "I hired one person. Now we have 26 people on staff."
Local relationships drove early growth. A construction ministry from Debbie's church donated labor to build out three of their locations. A Wayne-area donor provides office space rent-free. The Hawthorne headquarters — the former Heart and Lung Center building on Lafayette Avenue — was purchased when a local physician offered it to the organization. What Debbie had prayed would be a 2,000-square-foot space turned out to be over 10,000 square feet, with a small remaining mortgage and a fully renovated interior.
Today, Lighthouse operates year-round with same-day appointments available, and its reach extends far beyond a single pregnancy test.
Free Medical Services: Ultrasound, STD Testing, and Pregnancy Confirmation
Lighthouse nurses and sonographers have performed over 12,500 ultrasounds — all read by a volunteer radiologist.
The Hawthorne center includes a full medical suite staffed by eight nurses and sonographers across all four locations. Their flagship service is a free limited obstetric ultrasound — performed by a trained nurse or registered diagnostic medical sonographer (RDMS) and read by a volunteer radiologist who has reviewed all 12,500+ scans completed to date.
Jan, who oversees the medical team, walked the group through the ultrasound room during the tour, pointing to silicone life-sized fetuses organized by gestational week — 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 weeks — each one showing a recognizable developing baby.
The ultrasound serves several critical functions beyond the emotional:
Confirms pregnancy and establishes gestational age — many women arrive thinking they're 6 weeks along and discover they're 12
Screens for ectopic pregnancy, a life-threatening condition whose symptoms overlap with those of the abortion pill
Provides documentation that clients can use to apply for New Jersey Medicaid and prenatal care referrals
Lighthouse does not refer for abortion, but both Debbie and Jan were clear throughout the tour: the approach is entirely permission-based. Clients choose whether to view the ultrasound screen. Some ask not to see it. Some change their minds at the end and ask for a picture. The goal is informed decision-making, not pressure.
"We don't want money to be what keeps someone from continuing their pregnancy," Debbie said. "We want to make sure there are no barriers."
Lighthouse also offers free STD testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea via urine-based testing at all centers, currently on pause while the organization works through a medical licensing process that would eventually allow for early prenatal care on-site.
👉 See all medical services at Lighthouse →
The PREP Program: Parenting Support That Doesn't End at the Appointment
The Hawthorne center's material support room stocks maternity clothing, baby gear, and essentials through the baby's first year.
About a third of Lighthouse clients continue into what the organization calls PREP — the Parenting, Readiness, and Enrichment Program. Clients who enroll can come twice a month for up to a year after their baby's birth for parenting education, emotional support, spiritual mentorship, or practical classes like mommy-and-me development sessions.
The material support component is substantial. The Hawthorne center's supply room holds:
Maternity clothing in a range of sizes
Baby and toddler clothing from newborn through size 3T, sorted by size and season
Diapers, wipes, and formula through the child's first birthday
New car seats (donated through church collections)
Larger baby items including cribs, stored in a warehouse and redistributed across all four centers
Clients earn points at each visit, redeemable in the supply room — a design choice that preserves dignity and agency. They choose what they need, rather than receiving a prescribed bag of items.
Each baby born to a Lighthouse client goes home with a hand-knit blanket from a community volunteer and a welcome basket that includes a children's Bible and a parent devotional. The blankets come from across the region — churches, senior care centers, community groups.
"We wanted them to know: come before the baby comes," Debbie said of the PREP program design. "It's easier to build the relationship before than after."
Community Programs: Going Deeper on Relationships and Healing
Birth of a Family
Every Wednesday evening at the Hawthorne center, Lighthouse hosts Birth of a Family — a recurring eight-week program that brings parents together for a free supper, childcare for all ages, and an hour of guided conversation about healthy relationships, co-parenting, what it means to be a father, and what values families want to pass on.
Married volunteer couples participate not as instructors but as models — present, available, and relatable. For many of the parents Lighthouse serves, it's the first time they've been in close proximity to a functioning, committed partnership.
"A lot of the parents we serve have never seen a healthy, functioning two-parent family," Debbie said. "It's like a foreign language to them."
One 16-year-old participant told Lighthouse in a video interview that she hadn't learned basic social skills like how to greet someone — that where she grew up, you nodded your head and kept moving. The program gave her something she couldn't name before she walked through the door.
Getting Ahead in a Just-Getting-By World
In partnership with Paterson Renew Life, Lighthouse offers a 10-week workshop designed for people living in poverty to understand — and begin to break — the systemic cycles keeping them there. The curriculum, developed from a program created in Oklahoma, covers financial literacy, social capital, predatory business practices, and the difference between survival-mode decision-making and longer-term planning.
Over the past decade, approximately 160 Lighthouse clients — mostly mothers from the Paterson location — have gone through the program. The stories Debbie shared were striking: a woman who entered barely able to make eye contact, deep in an abusive relationship, who eventually returned to train Lighthouse staff on overcoming adverse childhood experiences.
Forgiven and Free
For women carrying the weight of a past abortion — sometimes for decades — Lighthouse offers Forgiven and Free, a faith-based eight-to-ten-week group that walks participants through grief, community, and self-forgiveness. Many participants say the hardest part is not accepting that God forgives them, but forgiving themselves.
In the basement of the Hawthorne headquarters, there is a quiet memorial wall — modeled after a similar installation in Tennessee — where name plates honor lives lost to abortion or pregnancy loss. The wall was created by a Lighthouse volunteer with a design background who had gone through the program herself.
Each year on October 15th — the International Day of Pregnancy and Infant Loss — Lighthouse holds a candle-lighting ceremony in the Hawthorne multipurpose room, open to anyone in the community who has experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, or pregnancy loss of any kind.
The memorial wall in the Hawthorne headquarters is open to any community member honoring a pregnancy or infant loss.
The People Lighthouse Serves: Real Trajectories, Real Change
Over the course of the tour, Debbie shared a handful of client stories — details changed for privacy, trajectories intact — that illustrated both the range of people Lighthouse serves and what sustained, wrap-around support can actually produce.
One woman came in at 29, convinced she needed to end a pregnancy. A Lighthouse nurse said something simple to her: "Don't make this decision just because you lost your job last week. Think about who you want to be in five years." She chose to continue the pregnancy, found support in her church in Paterson, and two years later became the receptionist at Lighthouse's Paterson center after a church youth pastor pointed her toward the job posting. She enrolled in Getting Ahead, cleared $35,000 in debt, moved into her own apartment, completed her associate's degree, and is finishing her bachelor's. Her son attends a Christian school. During COVID, she moved to work at his school — "God and the hours were better," Debbie said.
A mother brought her 21-year-old daughter in for a repeat scan. The daughter didn't know her mother had come to Lighthouse years earlier for her younger brother's pregnancy. Jan pulled the old records. The room went quiet.
A 16-year-old and her 18-year-old partner come to virtually every program Lighthouse offers because — as the teen said in a video interview — it's the closest thing to a consistent, caring community that she has.
How to Get Help, Donate, or Volunteer
For those seeking services: Lighthouse Pregnancy Resource Center serves anyone facing an unplanned pregnancy or related concern — regardless of what decision they're considering. All services are free and confidential. Same-day appointments are usually available.
📍 Hawthorne HQ: 297 Lafayette Ave, Hawthorne, NJ 07506 📞 (973) 238-9045 🌐 lighthouseprc.org ✉️ [email protected]
For donors: Lighthouse accepts gently used maternity clothing, baby clothing (newborn–3T), and new car seats. Diapers, wipes, and baby essentials can be sent via their Amazon Wish List (link through their site). Churches, schools, and community organizations are encouraged to organize drives, particularly in January.
For volunteers: Opportunities include clothing sorting, mentoring through PREP, serving as a mentor couple in Birth of a Family, and medical volunteering for qualified nurses and radiologists.
👉 Get involved at Lighthouse →
Frequently Asked Questions About Lighthouse PRC Hawthorne
Is Lighthouse only for women who want to continue their pregnancy?
No. Lighthouse serves anyone who is pregnant and undecided, as well as those who want to continue their pregnancy. All clients receive the same free, confidential, non-coercive care.
Do I need insurance to use Lighthouse's services?
No. All services — pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD testing, parenting education, and material support — are completely free of charge.
What is the Lighthouse PREP program?
PREP (Parenting, Readiness, and Enrichment Program) is an ongoing support program where clients can come twice monthly through the baby's first birthday for education, mentoring, and material support including diapers, baby clothing, and essentials.
Does Lighthouse serve Spanish-speaking clients?
Yes. Several staff members at Lighthouse are fully bilingual in English and Spanish, including the Hawthorne center manager.
Can I volunteer at Lighthouse even if I've never done anything like this before?
Yes. Many Lighthouse volunteers have no prior nonprofit or medical experience. Roles range from clothing sorting and data entry to mentoring and front desk support. Training is provided.
Where are Lighthouse's other locations in New Jersey?
In addition to Hawthorne, Lighthouse has centers in Hackensack (809 Main St), Paterson (75 Ellison St), and Wayne (2025 Hamburg Tpke, Suite L).
Lighthouse Pregnancy Resource Center has served North Jersey families since 1984. To schedule a free, confidential appointment or learn more about their programs, visit lighthouseprc.org or call (973) 238-9045.
