The recent increase in pro-abortion attacks against pro-life pregnancy centers highlights a major problem that exists within the abortion industry: lack of regulation and quality care for women. While abortion advocacy groups are putting great effort into mischaracterizing pro-life pregnancy centers, they are failing to see their own hypocrisy.
#ExposeFakeClinics is working to smear pro-life pregnancy centers by writing fake reviews online. NARAL Pro-Choice America describes pro-life pregnancy centers as “fake clinics” and has for years pushed for legislation to dictate how the centers advertise themselves. From California to Connecticut, these groups are working overtime to convince women that the pro-life centers that exist to help them are “dangerous,” “unethical,” and “haphazard.” They complain that some pregnancy centers don’t provide medical care (79% are now considered medical), but every pregnancy center offers services specific to the needs in their community. They work with different organizations and state programs to ensure women can access resources to help them choose life with confidence. Yet, because these pro-life centers do not commit or refer for abortions, the abortion industry has labeled them “deceptive.”
Lack of services
Pro-abortion groups complain that pregnancy centers don’t offer women enough options — namely abortion. An article in The Journal of Adolescent Health called “Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the U.S.: Lack of Adherence to Medical and Ethical Practice Standards” claims, “CPCs [crisis pregnancy centers] provide biased, limited, and inaccurate health information, including incomplete pregnancy options counseling and unscientific sexual and reproductive health information. The centers do not provide or refer for abortion or contraception but often advertise in ways that give the appearance that they do provide these services without disclosing the biased nature and marked limitations of their services.”
The advertisements that have been dubbed “deceptive” by pro-abortion groups include signs that simply state, “Pregnant? Need Help?”
In reality, abortion businesses are deceptive. Planned Parenthood claims to offer health care for women, but women have explained how they were deceived and pressured into abortion by the corporation’s staff. Women who choose life thanks to pro-life pregnancy centers represent countless dollars lost by abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, which commits 41% of the abortions in the U.S.
Yet, despite its claims to be a health care provider, Planned Parenthood actually provides less than one percent of the nation’s Pap tests, two percent of the nation’s manual breast cancer screenings, and zero mammograms. While abortions continue to increase in number at Planned Parenthood, over the last decade, cancer screenings at the abortion giant have declined 67%, Pap tests have fallen nearly 70%, and breast exams have dropped 68%. In fact, just three percent of women of reproductive age even use Planned Parenthood for care, and Planned Parenthood’s business model is structured around the promotion of abortion.
Fetal development lies
Abortion proponents claim pregnancy centers are misleading women about scientific facts surrounding pregnancy and fetal development, but this appears to be a mere projection on their part.
Early Options abortion facility in New York City falsely describes the abortion pill as doing nothing more than “bringing down your missed period.” In reality, the abortion pill kills a preborn child with a heart that begins to beat three weeks after fertilization.
Women have spoken of experiencing horrific pain with the abortion pill, and have recalled the heartbreak and trauma of seeing their baby’s bodies. Abortion facilities lie about fetal development and often refuse to let women see the ultrasound of their babies, meaning many women are not fully informed before undergoing an abortion. Abortion clinics have a vested interest in ensuring women go through with abortions. It’s how they make money.
Pregnancy centers, in contrast, do not make money if women who come to them for help choose life. Their services are provided free of charge because they believe women deserve to choose life with support and confidence.
Low standards
Abortion advocates claim that pregnancy centers are masquerading as health clinics, yet as previously stated, the majority are considered medical and have medical professionals/physicians as paid staff or as volunteers to offer medical advice to clients. In addition, if a woman does not have a doctor or health insurance, her local center is able to connect her with a physician and possibly a health insurance program.
Meanwhile, the abortion industry — which claims abortion is a necessary medical procedure — has successfully pushed for non-doctors to commit surgical abortions in various states, putting women’s lives at risk. Planned Parenthood has filed lawsuits against states that enacted laws mandating that abortions can be committed solely by physicians.
Every abortion carries the risk of complications, many life-threatening — including hemorrhage, uterine perforation, sterility, injury to bowel or bladder, and possible hysterectomy. And when a woman is injured during an abortion, the abortion facility is not equipped to deal with these injuries and must send them to hospitals at the women’s expense. In many cases, the doctors at the emergency room have little to no information about the extent of a woman’s injuries because abortionists are not always required to have admitting privileges to area hospitals. This means that the very doctors charged with helping to save the lives of these abortion victims have scant medical information to guide them. These egregious cases botched by abortionist LeRoy Carhart were so horrific that hospital staff were traumatized by what they encountered.
In addition, the abortion industry wants the ability to administer the abortion pill through telemedicine, without first examining a woman (the “no-test” abortion pill protocol) to rule out any conditions causing a higher risk of complications. The abortion pill is four times more dangerous than a first-trimester surgical abortion, and without an exam, abortionists would be putting women at greater risk. Taking the abortion pill with an ectopic pregnancy could lead to hemorrhage and death. Taking the abortion pill after the approved 10 weeks could lead to incomplete abortion and infection. And taking the abortion pill without Rh testing could cause future infertility.
Currently, there is no federal requirement for abortion businesses to report complications and only about half of states do so, which means it is unknown how many women have been injured or killed during abortions. Yet, the abortion industry wants pro-life pregnancy centers, which do not perform any risky medical procedures, to have doctors on staff when it doesn’t expect the same of its own surgical facilities.
Failed inspections
NARAL wants the government to control how pregnancy centers advertise their free services, yet the abortion industry does not want to adhere to basic health standards for medical facilities. Abortion facilities continuously fail health inspections but remain open and functioning despite this.
Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region was kept open by a judge despite the facility’s inability to renew its license after multiple failed inspections by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Those violations including failing to practice proper hand hygiene, using expired medications and supplies, using single-dose injectable meds for more than one patient, failing to properly sterilize instruments between patients, and failure to follow legal protocols such as reporting abortions committed after 18 weeks.
And that’s just one abortion facility.
In 2016, 16 of Texas’ 17 abortion facilities failed inspections, and a 2021 report from Americans United for Life revealed records from abortion facilities in 39 states which found that “women are being killed and injured in unspeakable numbers in a virtually unregulated regime of ‘abortion on demand.” These cases included medication overdose, heavy bleeding, hysterectomy, and death.
When abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” was accidentally exposed during a drug investigation in Philadelphia, it was revealed that his clinic had gone uninspected for over a decade. Inside, investigators found cat feces and urine, bloodstained blankets, and dismembered baby body parts in jars. Gosnell, who was himself not a board-certified obstetrician or gynecologist, hired mostly untrained staff. The National Abortion Federation witnessed firsthand many horrific conditions at Gosnell’s facility and chose not to report to authorities.
Despite all of these atrocities against women overlooked by the abortion industry itself, it has failed miserably to police itself, instead insisting on the strict regulation of non-medical pregnancy centers.
The abortion industry has filed a lawsuit against nearly every law that is created to regulate abortion businesses. It expects Americans to see abortion as any other form of health care or surgery, yet it refuses to be held to the same standards as the rest of the medical field — labeling every attempt at regulation an anti-choice attack on women.
In order to deflect from its own failures, the abortion industry is shifting focus to pro-life pregnancy centers. Shutting down these life-saving centers by painting them as deceptive and dangerous will help boost the abortion industry’s financial gain — and that, not women’s health, is the industry’s true concern.
“Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!
