Jeremy Blaschke was getting worried. He had thought that challenging other candidates for the presidency of his home school association had sounded fun. But with three days left, the 17-year-old from Clovis, N.M., didn’t have any ideas for the required service project to support his pro-life campaign platform.
Scrambling for ideas, he began surfing the Internet and landed at family.org, the Web site of Focus on the Family. There he discovered information about a program called Option Ultrasound, Focus' initiative to place ultrasound technology in pregnancy resource centers . The idea is that when troubled pregnant women, maybe teens, come looking for help, they are able to see ultrasound images of their developing baby and might choose to keep, rather than abort, the child.
“I hadn’t heard about the potential of ultrasound machines to save lives,” Jeremy says. But as he mulled the newfound information, an idea clicked: We could just buy one. It was an ambitious goal, thanks to an ultrasound machine’s $25,000 price tag.
Others were skeptical. “Nobody thought I could do it,” Jeremy says. “I was shocked, because I thought if God had laid this on my heart, then we could do it.”
The voters seemed to agree. Jeremy won the election. Now all he had to do was find a way to raise $25,000. The task would claim his focus for an entire year, but he felt strong about his motivation. “Each baby is a gift from God,” Jeremy says. “We have a duty and responsibility to protect those weaker than ourselves.”
Toward the Goal
Jeremy and his team kicked off their fundraising campaign with a presentation to their church during Sanctity of Human Life Week in January 2005. Jeremy was nervous. He hoped his five-minute speech would leave a good impression, but he didn’t have long to wait to find out. A special offering was collected afterward, and Jeremy and company were $2,000 closer to their goal!
Jeremy continued to gain confidence in his speaking skills. By the end of the campaign, he actually struggled to keep his presentations to 15 minutes instead of the original five. “I kept thinking of more things I wanted to share with everybody,” he says. “It’s incredible to me how a baby is formed in the first place.”
Not all of his church visits went as smoothly as the first, however. Jeremy recalls with regret a small church where he spoke when his team was only $2,000 from reaching its goal. “Satan knew we were really close, and he had to do something to try to stop us.”
Jeremy gave his usual speech, believing all was well, but when he got a response to his usual follow-up note to the church, his heart sank. His frankness about abortion had not been well received by the church. “I was really shaken up,” he says. “The pastor said, ‘You made my job of offering hope 10 times more difficult.’ It was really hard to hear. Hope is what this [campaign] is all about!”
With another church presentation soon to follow, Jeremy was torn. He felt unsure about his speech and decided to rewrite it, but he still didn’t feel peace about the situation after finishing a new draft.
A few days before his next presentation, Jeremy felt God speak to him. “He said, Jeremy, I put on your heart what to speak, and you spoke it. Sometimes persecution will come. So I went back to the original presentation.”
God taught Jeremy about His unfailing grace and encouragement in tough times, and Jeremy’s final presentation reinforced the lesson that God can bring good from bad situations. “People were in tears before my PowerPoint was done, and you could feel God moving,” Jeremy says. God used that small church to raise $2,000 that day—enough to put Jeremy and his team right at the $25,000 mark.
The team had met its goal, yet the largest fundraising event, a dinner-theater performance, still lay ahead of them. All 30 members made up the cast of “The Lions of Trondheim,” a drama set in World War II about Norwegian resistance fighterswho discover their greatest enemy is actually in their midst.
Before the show a donor had pledged to match their performance proceeds up to $2,500. When it was over, the play earned $8,000, putting the young fundraisers well above the $25,000 needed.
Coming Full Circle
Jeremy wasn’t the only member of the team who would come to feel strong about the campaign. His sister, Diana, at first skeptical, became one of his biggest supporters. “God made it my passion, too,” she says. “I realized when I saw the statistics that this was real. This was big, and it could actually change America.”
Diana became Jeremy’s self-appointed secretary, much to his relief. While helping organize the many raffles, presentations and events, her most important job was making phone calls for Jeremy to rally the other team members for each project. “Jeremy hates talking on the phone,” she teases. “It’s a strange fear,” he admits, laughing sheepishly.
One event that especially drew the team together occurred while hosting a booth at the annual Clovis Health and Wellness Fair. A woman stopped by their booth and told how, while working at a pregnancy resource center, she had witnessed women changing their minds about abortion when viewing ultrasound images of their babies. She was impressed with the teens’ efforts—so much so that she wrote them a $1,000 check on the spot. “I’ll remember that forever,” Jeremy says. “It cemented in all our minds how powerful this machine really is—how God could show His hand through it.”
There’s a heartfelt conviction behind Jeremy’s words as he shares his many experiences during this campaign. But perhaps his greatest passion lies in what he believes teens like him can accomplish to impact the world around them.
“If Jesus is first, the priority, He’ll let us know what to do,” Jeremy says. “When we open ourselves to His power to accomplish His convictions, we can do anything.”
Jeremy sees his own efforts and those of his team as an example of that fact. “Raising money for Option Ultrasound wasn’t done by teenagers—it was done by teenagers allowing God to work through them,” he says. “No matter where you are, look for the opportunities God gives you to share the Gospel. He will give them."
A few months after reaching their goal, Jeremy and a few of his team members traveled to Focus on the Family to present a check for $33,285.30 to Dr. James Dobson. Jeremy’s vision for saving lives came full circle in front of that packed chapel auditorium. Many in attendance cried openly or held back tears, and Jeremy was able to complete what had been on his heart for more than a year.
“The dollars were just a physical goal; it was so much more than that,” he says. “It was about letting babies live, have the choice to experience God and be lights in their own lives. It was about saving life.” 
ONE LIFE AT A TIME
Focus on the Family launched the Option Ultrasound Program in January 2004 with a goal of equipping 650 pregnancy resource centers with ultrasound machines or training to use the technology.
Why? A combination of counseling and ultrasound has helped a total of 85 percent of the abortion-risk clients leave these resource centers with intentions to carry their babies. With the help of Jeremy Blaschke and many others, Option Ultrasound has placed 256 services (203 ultrasound machines and 53 sonography trainings) in 45 states. As a result, it’s estimated that, since the inception of the program through August 2006, more than 10,200 babies potentially may have been saved . When counseling and ultrasound estimates are combined, it’s possible that approximately 21,800 babies have been saved.
