The Guiding Star Project is a women’s movement with a wholistic feminism worldview that educates and empowers women through a whole-life approach to healthcare that honors their natural female bodies. The vision of Guiding Star was conceived in 2007 by founder Leah A. Jacobson from the conviction that women of all ages deserve better than the current standard provided by mainstream healthcare.

Working with college students as a campus minister, Leah had a unique view of culture. She saw young men and women being formed, learning professions, exploring their new-found independence, and growing into the adults that would soon be influencing every aspect of culture in our country. She also saw a need.

In the hearts of many students she worked with Leah saw confusion, discontentedness, and a desperate need to find truth. These young men and women were searching to understand their purpose in a world that has removed all guidelines for what brings purpose and meaning to life.

Even the most basic building blocks of identity—biological realities—were being ignored and thrown out in their college courses and conversations with their peers. It was no longer acceptable to tell young people that their natural bodies give them clues as to what will fulfill them.

As a young woman herself, newly married and expecting her first child, Leah was somewhat of an anomaly on campus. She had chosen to become a mother and start a family, while serving as a campus minister. Students felt welcomed and accepted in her motherly presence and began coming to Leah for advice about how to find identity and purpose. These questions from the young women often turned into late night conversations in the living room of the ministry house, discussing the realities of married life, natural fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.

Leah soon realized the need for a drastic change in our culture. These young women were achieving a higher education, but did not even understand the basic fundamentals of their own female bodies. They were being told that sexuality was theirs to explore and exploit, gender identity meant anything to anyone, and that they would not be considered successful and still embrace their amazing feminine gifts.

Over the last 50 years the loss of respect for life, marriage between a man and a woman, and awareness of the biological realities between genders within our culture has created massive confusion.

A Culture of Death has taken root in all areas of society: schools, media, and healthcare. The lack of value in care and true understanding of a woman’s body has only led to dissociation from how a healthy female body functions.

Leah knew all women deserved the right to know how their natural female bodies function in order to have true bodily autonomy. She knew that understanding these basic biological functions would empower women in their choices surrounding fertility while still honoring the healthy functions of their fertile female bodies. Leah was dedicated to setting a new standard for women’s healthcare, one that could also support the medical needs of a post-Roe world—a concept no one could imagine at the time.

An America where women do not fear pregnancy?

A world where a 180-degree turn on how women view pregnancy has occurred?

It’s a world where a woman isn’t afraid of what someone is going to think when she finds out she is pregnant.

A world where a response like “was it an accident?” or “you know how this happens?” isn’t the first response.

A world where women feel like society has their back.

A world where they aren’t afraid of their body.

A world where they aren’t afraid of being pregnant.

A world where they aren’t afraid of giving birth.

A world where they feel empowered to be a mother…

…because they know they have support they need.

This kind of support is what we desire to create at Guiding Star centers across the Nation.