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Attacking those who do good

Pregnancy resource centers face threats from members of Congress


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It’s no secret that pregnancy resource centers have been under attack from pro-abortion voices, including the domestic terrorist group “Jane’s Revenge,” which has taken credit for vandalizing and even fire-bombing some of them. But the newest attacks on pregnancy resource centers have come from none other than federal lawmakers.

In July, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., declared that “crisis pregnancy centers” are there “to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help,” saying they should be shut down all across the country because of the torture they inflict on “pregnant people.” Sen. Warren has also introduced, alongside U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., a pair of bills in the House and Senate targeting pregnancy resource centers that engage in “deceptive and misleading advertising.” Beyond this, Warren also co-signed a letter with 20 other Democratic members of Congress demanding that Google stop advertising for “anti-abortion fake clinics” on its search engine and maps (because she apparently thinks Google should only publish government-approved, pro-abortion search results).

It’s clear from Sen. Warren’s outdated, politically incorrect usage of the term “crisis pregnancy center” that she is unfamiliar with what these centers do—namely, the very thing pro-abortionists claim pro-lifers do not do. Pregnancy resource centers actually care for women. They offer job training to women, teach them how to set up appointments for their children, and incentivize fathers to be involved. Not only do pregnancy resource centers care for women, but they also care for their unborn children pre- and post-birth. Most of the 3,000 centers in the United States provide free ultrasounds, pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing, counseling (including post-abortive counseling), clothes, diapers, baby gear, and food, including elusive baby formula, the shortage of which the government has still failed to resolve.

According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, in 2019 alone, pregnancy resource centers provided more than 486,000 free ultrasounds, 731,000 free pregnancy tests, 291,000 clients with parenting and prenatal education classes, and 21,000 clients with after-abortion support and recovery sessions. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is now using the overturning of Roe v. Wade to fundraise so it can continue to “protect and provide care,” even though it has claimed abortion only accounts for 3 percent of its services.

Sen. Warren offers no substance to her claim that pregnancy resource centers are deceptive, “fooling” people into partaking of their (mostly free, mostly volunteer-run and donor-funded) services.

Sen. Warren also asserts that these centers “torture pregnant people” by their deceptive nature. Aside from the fact that abortion itself is worse than torture—it is literally the ending of a human life—Sen. Warren offers no substance to her claim that pregnancy resource centers are deceptive, “fooling” people into partaking of their (mostly free, mostly volunteer-run and donor-funded) services. Yet, the Warren and Maloney bills are targeting “crisis pregnancy centers” (again, using the politically incorrect term) that “engage in deceptive and misleading advertising.”

Yet, no evidence of false advertising is presented. Instead, Sen. Warren and others claim (again, falsely and without substantiation) that the information these centers share is “medically-inaccurate and deceptive.” That is to say, Sen. Warren simply does not agree with the pro-life convictions held by these pregnancy centers. The “incorrect medical information” pro-abortionists usually accuse pregnancy resource centers of peddling are things like the common side effects of contraceptives and abortions or the ability to reverse medical abortions in some cases using abortion pill reversal (which is successful in as many as 64 to 68 percent of cases, despite the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ assessment that it’s “unsupported by science”).

By now, we can see clearly that it is not pregnancy resource centers that are sharing false or misleading medical information, but abortion proponents are. Abortion advocates routinely downplay, ignore, and even produce skewed data regarding contraceptive and abortion side effects. Pro-abortionists are now saying abortion pills are “safer than Tylenol,” which is, in fact, actual false advertising. When is the last time Tylenol left you heavily bleeding and cramping or even hemorrhaging from infected fetal remains that were improperly dispelled from your body?

Because of misinformation and dangerous comments from lawmakers like Sen. Warren, pregnancy resource centers are having to use their meager donations on security for their staff, clients, and buildings. In most cases, these centers are nonprofits run without state or federal money, are solely run by donations, or are kept afloat by churches. Most stand to make no money from the services they provide. And they are already forced by law in some localities to tell people that they do not provide abortions.

Laws should make it hard to do bad things and easy to do good things. So why are lawmakers attacking people who are trying to do good things? Despite intimidation from Congress or domestic terrorist groups, pro-lifers running pregnancy resource centers will not be deterred in caring for women and children, born and unborn. Pregnancy resource centers present the full truth to their clients, including the real “choice” that abortion proponents do not want women to have—the choice to keep their babies.


Katelyn Walls Shelton

Katelyn Walls Shelton is a Bioethics Fellow at the Paul Ramsey Institute. She is a women’s health policy consultant who previously worked to promote the well-being of women and the unborn at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She graduated from Yale Divinity School and Union University and lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, John, and their three children.

@annakateshelt


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