June 21, 2010
Recently, NARAL has been on the attack against Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) that work all over the United States to give women abortion alternatives. According to NARAL, CPCs “look like a woman’s health-care clinic. But most are unlicensed and unregulated organizations staffed by anti-choice volunteers. Their number-one goal is to make women feel too guilty to choose information that is medically inaccurate and manipulative. Let’s be clear: CPCs do not provide abortion care…[but] advertise abortion services that they clearly don’t provide”
Let me be clear: NARAL and Planned Parenthood are the manipulators.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers do not lie about abortion. If anything, they are more upfront about the procedures and consequences than Planned Parenthood (PP) is. Go online to Pregnancy Centers and compare how they describe the abortion procedures with how Planned Parenthood does (you will have to click on “what happens during an in-clinic abortion”). While P.P. uses terminology such as “speculum” that some women might not understand (hence the link provided for the glossary page) and remains factual about the procedure and not circumstances, Pregnancy Centers (PC) go into more detail, explaining how D&E abortions have to occur because the child is too large, and rather than simply say that “medical instruments and a suction machine gently empty your uterus” as PP does. CPCs give the whole dirty truth about how exactly the baby is being violently torn from the mother’s womb. Also – PP only says what Aspiration and D&E abortions are, and vaguely how they’re performed, not when each procedure is used and how they change depending on the point of pregnancy the woman is in. CPCs do.
So who’s misleading whom here? Pregnancycenters.org (the largest site that links Crisis Pregnancy Resource Centers) is being upfront and completely forthright with women; Planned Parenthood is not. PC also provides source documentation to show they are being honest – and they cite 26 different sources, including the FDA and CDC. Tell me NARAL – are the FDA and CDC “medically inaccurate”? Is Planned Parenthood? – Pregnancy Center isn’t giving a differing description on the procedures, it’s just giving the full story.
Planned Parenthood is very adamant about providing women with information on all possible choices of how to respond to an unplanned/crisis pregnancy: abortion, adoption, and parenthood. They specialize in abortions and are the leading abortion provider in the United States. However, when it comes to parenting and adoption, why is it a bad thing for women considering these options to turn to other organizations that specialize in these areas? If discussing the option of choosing adoption or parenthood, doesn’t it make sense to look into groups that specialize in such areas? There’s a reason why when we think “abortion” we think Planned Parenthood, and not when we think “adoption.”
Besides, what does a CPC’s view on abortion have anything to do with their knowledge of adoption? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that stance would make them work harder to find other options for women rather than abortion? Also, all Crisis Pregnancy Centers are Non-Profit organizations that don’t charge women for their services. PP does, which is probably why for many years it’s had such a skewed ratio of adoption to abortion (1 : 120 in 2006 according to their own annual report), with it finally lowering to 1 adoption referral per 62 abortions in 2007. After all Planned Parenthood receives no profit if a woman chooses adoption for her child. And then there’s the ratio itself: it’s 1 adoption referral, per 62 performed abortions. This means that 62 children were aborted for every 1 time a P.P. worker told a woman “you could seek an adoption place.” That doesn’t even mean a child was actually adopted, only that “maybe” they were. There is no way to know for sure how many of those referrals actually resulted in an adoption or if the woman turned around and went back to Planned Parenthood for an abortion.
Planned Parenthood and other independent abortion clinics pride themselves on offering post abortive counseling. Why? If the fetus is nothing but “tissue,” or merely “a product of conception,” or even just a “potential” human or life, then why do women react with emotions ranging from depression or guilt, to anger and/or regret? Atlanta Women’s Medical Center has this to say about their staff: “Atlanta Women’s Medical Center is like a family, and we truly believe that our team of staff members and medical professionals provide excellent care because they themselves are treated in a manner that shows respect and caring. The people who make up Atlanta Women’s Medical Center enjoy their work, and are challenged and inspired each day.” And yet just above that statement on the same page of their website it is noted that they “understand that high quality medical care [for abortions] means taking emotional and spiritual needs into account, in additional to physical safety and treatment.”
If abortion is such excellent, respectful, and loving option, then why are there any spiritual, physical, or emotional needs that must be addressed when/after performing such procedures? Could it possibly be because Post Abortive Syndrome occurs (though no pro-choice organization admits it)? As Silent No More Women put it, “Women do regret abortion” (though PP says most feel relief after having one). In turn, abortion hurts women; consider the recent case against Washington D.C. Planned Parenthood where Shanteese Butler, a 14 year old girl, was rendered infertile after the doctor punctured her uterus and she took herself hemorrhaging to the hospital, despite PP claiming that abortion is safer than actually giving birth. How can you tell a woman that the child in their womb is in no way a human being, a life, and turn around to offer counseling services for any post-abortive psychological or emotional issues? Speaking of such women who speak out against abortion, ever heard of Norma McCorvey, AKA Jane Roe from Roe V. Wade? She’s now pro-life and speaks out against this practice. Her conversion ought to speak volumes on this matter. One more thing, she KEPT her baby that the courts allowed her to abort.
NARAL and Planned Parenthood’s vicious and slanderous attacks on Crisis Pregnancy Centers are without merit or justification. Crisis Pregnancy Centers all over this nation work to help women find alternatives to abortion. All their services are free, including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, pregnancy resource kits (diapers, formula, clothes, etc.), parenting classes, adoption information and referrals, and post abortive counseling and support.
These facilities have nothing to gain but the knowledge that they are helping women. There is no profit for them, only a drive to assist those who may feel as if abortion is their only option. They know to direct women to licensed medical professionals, and stand by the women who walk through their doors for as long as the women desire them to be. The same cannot be said for a great many abortion clinics. There are over 4,000 CPCs nationwide to only a little more than 800 Planned Parenthood clinics; clearly Crisis Pregnancy Centers are doing something right.
If nothing else, they must be hurting the bottom line of abortion clinics, and yet that is the only thing NARAL and Planned Parenthood haven’t accused CPCs of, meaning, it’s probably true.
Megan Hamrick is a Summer 2010 Missionary for Life with Students for Life of America and is a Junior at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.