By Michael D. Clark
Enquirer Staff Writer

MONROE - Monee Darden is only 15, and already, she's making the hardest choice of her life: whether to keep her unborn baby girl or give her up for adoption as soon as she's born.

Tiffany Smart is 14 and made her decision before she gave birth this week: She'll keep her baby boy and raise him, as a single mom.

Darlene Bishop, founder of the Darlene Bishop Home for Life at the Solid Rock Church in Monroe, talks with 15 year-old Monee Darden of San Antonio, Texas. (Enquirer photo/GLENN HARTONG)

Monee and Tiffany are two of more than a dozen girls who are taking part in an experiment to revive an institution that has all but disappeared in America - the live-in home for pregnant teens.

"This is the hardest thing I've ever done," says Monee, who's living in the $1.6 million Darlene Bishop Home for Life in Warren County. A high school sophomore, Monee says she's leaning toward keeping her baby, due in November.

Once common throughout the country, so-called "homes for unwed mothers" offered sanctuary for pregnant girls who were ostracized and shunned in their communities. Over time, however, changes in society's thinking, advances in birth control, legalization of abortion and expansion of foster care whittled the number of homes from the hundreds during their early 20th-century peak to just a few in each state today.

Now a year old, the Darlene Bishop Home for Life is believed to be the only home for pregnant teens in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, authorities say.

Since July 2003, 15 pregnant girls, ranging in age from 13 to 17, have lived at the home. All but one kept their babies. Reviews so far have been positive, even from local groups that support abortion rights.

Built by the 4,000-member evangelical Solid Rock Church in Monroe, the home is part of a 60-acre, multi-building campus marked by a 42-foot-tall Jesus statue just off Interstate 75.

Girls stay free in a 23,000-square-foot residence. They receive meals, boarding, educational tutoring, and parenting, life-skills and Christian instruction.

The girls must pay their own medical expenses - medical care is not provided on site - while preparing for motherhood or the daunting task of giving up their firstborns for adoption.

The home hopes to reach its capacity of 30 girls, one of the largest pregnant-teen homes in the United States, by next year.

"I look at the home like it's my own baby," says Darlene Bishop, co-pastor of Solid Rock and founder of the pregnant-teen home. "I gave it birth, and now watching it grow is awesome. I just feel like I'm giving something back that was given to me, and that is life."

Speaking fees fund home

The 59-year-old mother of four is alive today because of her own mother's decision to give birth, despite a doctor's warning that she could die in the process.

"That's where my vision for this home came from," says Bishop, who with her husband, Lawrence, founded Solid Rock Church in 1980. He is co-pastor with her.

Darlene Bishop preaches an anti-abortion message in more than 100 appearances a year on the international church circuit.Her speaking fees - she won't say how much she receives - provided most of the money to build the new teen home. Speaking fees also help fund the home's operating budget, she says.

The private two-story home is a luxurious haven for troubled girls.

A giant curving staircase adorns the entrance atrium. Girls take turns preparing meals in an expansive kitchen with marblecounter tops, commercial-sized ovens and a half-dozen large freezers. The girls and staff eat three meals daily together in a country-club-style dining room featuring richly tiled floors and eight wooden tables that seat four each. Religious-themed paintings and dried-flower arrangements dot the room's walls. The eastern portion of Solid Rock's grassy campus is visible through the dining room's large windows.

There are 15 bedrooms; girls share them two to each room. They are unadorned by TVs, phones or radios. Artwork depicting scenes of God's love and forgiveness hang on almost every wall.

"Many of the girls have deep-rooted hurt and pain from abuse, addiction, self-hate and rejection," Bishop says. "It takes more than just food and clothing to reverse the negative cycles. It takes the miraculous change by the power of Jesus Christ."

The girls have periodic access to phones but can talk only to family members and those friends approved by their parents or legal guardians. They must stay on the home's grounds unless escorted off by staff or family members.

The home's reputation is spreading among Greater Cincinnati churches, school counselors and social service agencies that deal with troubled girls. Its Web site is linked to the Solid Rock Church site on the Internet.

17 staff members

Girls generally arrive in the first three months of pregnancy and leave after they give birth because the home is not licensed to house infants. Some of the five full-time and 12 part-time staffers are in the home around the clock looking after the girls.

Most staff members are Solid Rock Church members, and many have experience working with teens. All are women, and some are single mothers themselves.

Home Director Beth Ward says staff members are trained not to influence the girls' decisions on whether they keep their babies.

"Our mission is to inform, educate and inspire them spiritually to whatever decision they make."

Sue Momeyer, president of Greater Cincinnati's Planned Parenthood,says that even though the home's mission opposes abortion, it provides an "alternative for young women who have decided to continue their pregnancies, and I can see where a home like that could meet their needs.

"My only concern would be the importance of allowing the girls to make their own decision," she says. "But if they don't try and coerce them, and if they are meeting the needs of the girls, then that's fine."

Beth Benham describes the Bishop home as "awesome and badly needed." The director of the church-supported Pregnancy Care of Cincinnati, a Sharonville group that instructs pregnant teens about non-abortion options, has referred six pregnant teens to the home in the past year.

The home already has modified its original mission to include girls who are not pregnant but are at risk for homelessness and in need of shelter and life-skills training. Since the home opened, 14 other girls have joined the 15 pregnant teens who have lived there so far.

Monee was in her hometown of San Antonio, Texas, in March when she discovered she was pregnant.

Confronted by her mother about dating a 19-year-old man, she confessed they were having sex.

Monee's mother immediately insisted they drive to a pharmacy and buy a home pregnancy test kit. She then drove to a McDonald's and hustled Monee into the restroom - ordering her daughter into a stall to urinate on the test strip.

They then sat silently across from one another at one of the restaurant's tables, together their eyes staring down at the test indicator for five minutes until its chemical reaction materialized a positive "+" symbol meaning pregnancy.

Their eyes lifted, met, and they cried.

Monee says her mother and father have since been very supportive. Her mother had attended one of Bishop's religious services, where she learned about the home.

Monee describes Bishop as her "spiritual mother" and says she loves, and is inspired by, the home's founder.

She admits that pregnancy is difficult. And coping with typical teenage hormonal shifts and the maternal mood swings of her housemates is nerve-racking.

"My hormones are all out of whack, and if I'm not getting sick, then my back hurts or my sides."

From a short chest of drawers Monee pulls out a small stack of baby clothes she had just bought, washed and folded. Kneeling between the two beds in her room, Monee lifts the infant clothes to her nose to smell the washed freshness.

"I have dreams where I see her in her school pictures," Monee says of her unborn daughter. "She has curly hair. My mom has curly hair so maybe she'll have it, too."

Curbing her temper

Tiffany Smart worked to improve herself in the months before she gave birth this week to a boy named Isaiah Lee. Among other things, the Miamisburg teen says the home taught her self-control.

"I have a bad attitude, but I'm getting better," she confessed in July. "I feel safe here because it's a Christian home, and I got saved here. I've learned to hold back my temper."

Tiffany says she wants nothing to do with the 20-year-old who fathered her child. She wants to finish high school, and she's planning a career in the Air Force.

"I'm going to make it," Tiffany says. "I used to have low self-esteem, but I've accomplished a lot since coming here."

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E-mail mclark@enquirer.com