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Crisis pregnancy centers, also known as Pregnancy Resource Centers, use false advertising and information to discourage women from having abortions and encourage them to choose parenting or adoption options.
Typically founded in religious beliefs and under the umbrella of pro-life organizations and abstinence-only government funding, these centers can often be found online by using search engine keywords like "abortion" and "abortion clinic." The deceptiondoesn't end there.
Their Web sites boast of offering counseling and information about all pregnancy options for women experiencing unexpected pregnancies, but their actions and rhetoric do not give equal or fair treatment to all the options.
They are essentially pro-life clinics incognito as open-minded information and health care providers.
These centers are located around the United States, and their government funding has increased in recent years.
A July 2006 report put out by the Minority Staff in the United States House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform entitled, "False and Misleading Health Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers," notes that, ""Prior to the Bush Administration, only a few pregnancy resource centers received federal funding. Beginning in 2001, however, federal funding of pregnancy resource centers increased sharply. In total, over $30 million federal funds went to more than 50 pregnancy resource centers between 2001 and 2005."
Unfortunately, this information is kept hidden from the general public and, especially, from their clients and helpline callers.
These centers fail to mention to the women that seek them out that the centers support pro-life views and, instead, offer the women false information about the risks and effects of abortion.
"The individuals who contact federally funded pregnancy resource centers are often vulnerable teenagers, who are susceptible to being misled and need medically accurate information to help them make a fully informed decision," the report reads.
The centers play on the vulnerability of their clients and callers and use scare tactics, false information and anti-abortion rhetoric to convince the pregnant women that abortion is not the way to go, without ever saying it.
The government report further explores these issues and the government's role in them. For the report, female investigators called 25 Pregnancy Resource Centers, posing as pregnant women needing information about their options. Twenty-three of the 25 centers were reached. "During the investigation, 20 of the 23 centers (87 percent) provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion."
The clinics provided the women with information ranging from abortions resulting in increased risks of breast cancer to infertility to suicidal ideations.
The centers used studies to back up their claims, but according to the government report and a 2003 National Cancer Institute (as mentioned in "Pro-Life Centers Masquerade as Health Clinics," a column by Cameron Johnson published in The Daily Mississippian), there is no significant correlation between abortion and breast cancer.
Similarly, no evidence can be found that links abortion to lowered rates of fertility or increased rates of post-abortion stress or suicidal tendencies, the report notes. These clinics attempt to substantiate their claims with bunk, untrue studies that unsuspecting, vulnerable teenagers and women will not question.
In addition to the blatantly false information these centers provide is a more subtle form of persuasion that may be even more powerful. Their names alone provide a false sense of security and help to their clients, and they use powerful language intended to play on the pregnant woman's emotional state in order to convince the mother that abortion is not only a bad option, it's a morally wrong option, without ever saying it.
Johnson, in her aforementioned column, notes, 'These names suggest professional medical support, among other things, but these centers do not have trained medical professionals, and the same tests are available at grocery stores.
There are many anecdotes where women, upon arriving at a CPC, claim they were subjected to emotional blackmail in the form of smothering support or blatant guilt trips."
Abortion rights and anti-abortion supporters alike should find issue with CPC's and their practices. While the problem here concerns abortion, it is not the central problem. No matter what stance an organization or individual takes on abortion, teenagers and women are being given false, frightening information that, regardless of what decision they make, may cause them undue psychological and physical harm.
They are lured into a false sense of security and then lied to by individuals posing as health advocates and counselors.
Nobody should be exposed to these kinds of mistruths and misleading information. The fact that the federal government is not only ignoring this injustice but is financially supporting it is appalling.
We may not be able to rectify the wrongs that are being done to young women by these centers overnight, but we can be advocates for positive, equal and fair treatment of pregnancy options. We can be supporters for women with a choice to make. We can provide them with correct information.
Mostly, we can stand against crisis pregnancy centers / Pregnancy Resource Centers and anyone who is furthering a political agenda at the cost of the emotional and physical well being of pregnant teenagers and women.
