I previously posted the results of my personal investigation into the fake medical clinics that call themselves “Pregnancy Resource Centers.” [1]
My earlier investigation revealed that Pregnancy Resource Centers are unwilling to plainly admit their real agenda: to keep people ignorant about birth control, to deny women access to effective birth control methods (including birth control pills) and to pour guilt on people struggling with deep and personal decisions regarding pregnancy.
Alternet now reports [2] that these fake medical clinics are proliferating while clinics offering actual medical care lag behind. S. How are these “Pregnancy Resource Centers” funding this campaign of guilt and disinformation? With tax dollars. In Texas, for example, $25 million was cut from the state budget for family planning services and $5 million of that money was given to fund so-called crisis pregnancy centers [3]. Other states, including Missouri, have considered financing Pregnancy Resource Centers with tax dollars. According to Planned Parenthood, Pregnancy Resource Centers (also known as “crisis pregnancy centers”) across the nation “have received $60 million of government grants.”
CPCs pose as objective health facilities using neutral-sounding names and deceptive advertising practices that lead women facing unintended pregnancies to believe that they will be offered unbiased counseling and a full range of reproductive health services. Unsuspecting women are lured into CPCs with the offer of free pregnancy testing or HIV tests.
When women are making a health decision, they should never be subject to deceit and trickery,” said Maloney, at a press conference on March 30 to announce the bill. “Some of these crisis pregnancy centers should be called ‘counterfeit pregnancy centers.’ They have the right to exist, but they shouldn’t have the right to deceive in order to advance their particular beliefs.
According to Planned Parenthood, “Deception and lies don’t help women make informed choices.”Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) recently introduced the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services (SDAWS) Act, which would require the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce truth-in-advertising standards for fake “clinics” known as anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). Take action here [5].
Pregnancy Resource Centers are also setting themselves up “as the ‘go-to’ people for sex education in the public schools and are quickly becoming the primary providers of sex education to our children.” As I discovered by my investigation, the Pregnancy Resource Centers are exerting their political muscle in trying to deny women access to birth control pills and other standard methods of family planning.
These are golden days, indeed, if you believe that the decision of whether to bear children should be haphazard, accidental, inspired by ignorance and fraught with medieval-era guilt.
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