Crisis Pregnancy Centers push false information, biased advice
by Anna
Web Correspondent
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund
I think a lot of us have seen the ads on late-night TV. “Pregnant? Scared? Call for help!” But I, for one, never paid much attention. Yes, I found these advertisements a little disturbing in tone, but I never viewed them as a real threat. Unfortunately, I was wrong in presuming their harmlessness.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) are usually funded by anti-choice religious institutions, although this information is rarely available to patrons. They may pose as legitimate reproductive health centers but do not offer the prescribed array of health services. Furthermore, CPCs frequently use deceptive advertising tactics to lure women into what are essentially anti-abortion lectures; they may be misleadingly listed under “abortion services” in the phonebook or have names similar to those of actual abortion clinics. Sometimes they are intentionally located so close to abortion providers that women wander into them by mistake. One university student who entered a nearby CPC “undercover” (she was not pregnant) reported that she was brought into an office filled with “pictures of the fetus as it grows during a pregnancy and anti-choice propaganda.”
Once inside these clinics, women receive a wealth of inaccurate information about contraception and abortion rather than being offered actual health services. Some CPCs insist that birth control is ineffective as a ploy to push for abstinence. A U.S. House of Representatives report from July 2006 ( “False and Misleading Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers” ) states that a female researcher contacted 23 CPCs and received false medical information about abortion from 20 of them. Despite substantial scientific research indicating that abortion does not increase the risk of infertility or breast cancer, many centers told the caller that this was the case. They also claimed that abortion makes suicide attempts more likely, although studies show that suicide after abortion is no more probable than suicide after childbirth.
In looking at the websites of a few different CPCs, I was interested to find that some were more blatant in their purpose than others, although all posed as moral support systems that offer young women a comfortable atmosphere in which to make their “choice” (ironic since only one choice is considered the right one). The Central Indiana Crisis Pregnancy Center’s website featured a story by a woman named Stacey who admitted that she had gotten wrong directions to the abortion clinic where she had an appointment (does this sound familiar?) and wound up listening to someone tell her about the tragedy of abortion. A few hours later, she decided not to get an abortion and left with “a little more hope.”
The website of CPC Anchorage was slightly less obvious in its anti-abortion rhetoric; most of the site’s opening page was abstract and seemingly unbiased. It even offered a section explaining the morning-after pill, although this information was full of subtle phrasing that advised against taking the drug. Look at the “Considering Abortion?” and “Wise Sexual Choices” portions of the website, however, and themes like “abstinence” and “spiritual/moral consequences” will pop out at you multiple times.
Despite the lack of sound medical information offered by these “clinics,” they continually receive federal funding under the Bush administration’s abstinence charter. As the U.S. House of Representatives report explains, few CPCs received federal money before Bush’s election, but between 2001 and 2005 more than $30 million went to CPC funding. For that amount of money, just think how many women could have received legitimate medical attention that would have allowed them to make unforced choices.
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