Pro-life pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) outnumber abortion facilities by a ratio of three to one, according to The Alliance, a group of pro-abortion state advocates. The information was published in a report attacking “Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs).”
In the report, Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Industry in Nine States – Gender Justice, The Alliance claimed that last year (2020) the number of pro-life PRC’s in the United States had climbed to 2,527, three times the number of abortion facilities still open that same year.
The report also indicates that while the pro-life community was striving to offer life-affirming options to pregnant women, abortion facilities have been closing. According to the report, in the past 42 years, abortion facilities have declined over 72% (from 2,749 in 1978 to 780 recorded in 2020).
“Today, crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics nationwide by an average of 3 to 1.10. The disparities are higher in states that fund CPCs: In Pennsylvania, the ratio of CPCs to abortion clinics is 9 to 1; in Minnesota, it is 11 to 1.11,” the report claims.
Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRCs) outnumber abortion facilities (Image: The Alliance State Advocates for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality website)
Report motive: Smear pro-life resource centers and eliminate the ‘competition’
A recent research paper has found that pregnant women who are considering abortion and who visit a CPC are about 20% less likely to choose abortion than pregnant women who don’t visit one. Given the declining number of abortion facilities and growing number of PRCs, it is no wonder The Alliance, NARAL, Planned Parenthood and other abortion extremists continue to attack pro-life options for women.
The report attempts to smear PRCs, especially targeting those that receive public funds. The motive appears to be due to the extraordinary success the pro-life movement has had in changing hearts and minds on abortion, passing legislation, and opening resource centers for pregnant women.
“We live in the most hostile era for reproductive freedom in decades. The anti-abortion movement’s two primary strategies — passing abortion bans and contraception restrictions and expanding crisis pregnancy center networks with taxpayer money — are simultaneously reaching peak, unprecedented levels,” the report’s executive summary claimed.
“State-funded CPCs promoted abortion pill reversal at significantly higher rates and offered prenatal care and referral less often than CPCs without state funding,” the group’s summary claims. As a result, The Alliance is calling on state lawmakers to “stop funding CPCs and to dramatically increase investment in equitable access to evidence-based reproductive health care, especially in underresourced communities.”
The partiality and bias of The Alliance, the report’s author
On their website The Alliance is described as “a collaborative of state and regional law and policy members working to leverage our states as laboratories for change. We enact comprehensive strategies around key progressive issues – working to achieve clear wins in the courts, advance proactive policies, and build grassroots power and action.”
The organization claims to support “human rights” and allegedly holds to the principle where, “We envision a future where every individual has a right to live their life with dignity, autonomy, and access to the resources they need to thrive.”
However, a look at the organization’s list of “priorities” reveals that “Advancing Reproductive Rights, Health, and Justice” — code for abortion on demand — is priority number one.
“We value the dignity and autonomy of all persons, and fight for their rights to determine whether, when, and with whom to engage in intimate relationships; to become pregnant; to support or terminate a pregnancy; to parent without stigma; to give birth how they choose; and to be supported in all decisions about their bodies and selves, from birth to death,” the organization wrote.
The group currently partners with Gender Justice, headed by a former Deputy Director for the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF), Legal Voice which was originally founded in 1978 as the Northwest Women’s Law Center, Southwest Women’s Law Center and Women’s Law Project which calls itself the “de facto legal arm of the reproductive rights movement in Pennsylvania.”
Authors and reviewers of the report include an abortionist responsible for a woman’s death
The report was authored by Jenifer McKenna, a long-time Planned Parenthood supporter who recently donated to the Abortion Care Network (according to her Facebook page), as well as Tara Murtha, a director of strategic communications at Women’s Law Project.
Murtha is a journalist who has covered abortion at the Philadelphia Weekly and other outlets including the pro-abortion Rewire News Group. While Murtha’s report advocates the regulation of pro-life pregnancy centers, she seemed to bemoan oversight requirements of abortion facilities. Ironically, she once referred to the infamous Kermit Gosnell case as the “result of politicizing abortion.”
Yet, on her LinkedIn account, Murtha shared the PRC hit piece, writing, “Did you know your tax dollars are funding experimental ‘treatments’ on low-income pregnant people?”
Tara Murtha at The Alliance Image: linkedin
The research advisor on the project was Laura E. Dodge, who works at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beth Israel Medical Center and is a former intern at Ibis Reproductive Health, which as recently as 2020 was directly funded by the abortion pill’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, and is currently funded by the Packard Foundation, a large investor in Danco.
Dodge recently wrote, “it’s important that we improve the quality of search results and ads” on abortion and claimed that she was “partnering with computer engineers to expand our searches to more cities and ultimately help search engines, providers, and allies optimize their algorithms to help people find the care they want.”
“CPC Report Reviewers” included Dr. Lisa Perriera, an abortionist who in 2014 committed a late abortion on a pregnant woman in Cleveland, Ohio — and that woman died as a result. Live Action News previously reported that the abortion facility where Perriera worked (Preterm) had dated Lakisha Wilson’s pregnancy at 19 weeks and 4 days but it was later revealed Wilson was closer to 23 weeks.
According to public 911 records obtained through open records requests and medical records leaked to Operation Rescue, the abortion facility waited 30 minutes after Wilson suffered respiratory arrest to call an ambulance. In the video below of the call, you can hear a Preterm employee tell a 911 dispatcher that Wilson was “not breathing.”
Additional “CPC Report Reviewers” include the formerly mentioned Laura E. Dodge, as well as:
- Liza Fuentes, a Guttmacher Institute staff researcher who was previously a Senior Project Manager at Ibis Reproductive Health. Fuentes has also worked for Gynuity Health Projects (GHP), and has associations with multiple abortion groups. Fuentes also served on the boards of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, the National Network of Abortion Funds, the New York Abortion Access Fund and the DC Abortion Fund.
- Anna Bean, Director of Programs at Abortion Access Front where she is tasked to mobilize “volunteers to expose anti-abortion extremism and support abortion providers.”
- Alexandra DelValle, a Senior Director at Groundswell Fund, whose mission is to “strengthen[] U.S. movements for reproductive and social justice….” The organization is endorsed by Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson. DelValle also sits on the board of the Funders Network on Population, Reproductive Health, and Rights now known as Funders for Reproductive Equity, led by persons associated with large abortion philanthropist organizations such as the Packard, Hewlett, Grove, and Gates Foundations.
- Shayla Walker, the “vision realization advisor at Our Justice, an abortion fund and reproductive justice organization based in the Twin Cities, which provides financial and logistical support to people seeking abortions.”
A Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) study on the impact of pro-life PRCs found that pregnancy resource centers served nearly 2 million people in 2019, at an estimated value of nearly $270 million. This included material assistance, which CLI valued at $26,747,835.
Editor’s Note, 3/14/22: This article previously stated abortion facilities had declined 28% between 1978 and 2020; the correct number is 72%. We regret the error.
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