Earlier this month, LifeSiteNews.com published an exclusive piece revealing that the Montgomery County Council was in league with NARAL Pro-Choice America to shut down local pregnancy centers.
This is not the first time Montgomery County has been in the news. In 2010, the county passed an ordinance requiring pregnancy centers to post signs that they did not have doctors on staff. In March 2010, a judge issued a third ruling in favor of the pregnancy centers.
And from LifeSiteNews.com:
The emails obtained by LifeSiteNews reveal that, unbeknownst to the public, Montgomery County dropped the case after conferring with NARAL. The county stopped defending the law the month after NARAL recommended that very action in a March 14, 2014 letter, sent a week after the judge permanently blocked the law.
“It is our hope that the Montgomery County Council (Council) will once again partner with us to ensure Montgomery Council citizens are aware of the misleading tactics used by crisis pregnancy centers,” Maryland’s NARAL chapter president, Jodi Finkelstein, wrote.
In the letter, sent by the county to LifeSiteNews along with other emails through a Freedom of Information Act request, Finkelstein “strongly” recommended that the county drop the case and implement seven other strategies.
While the judge’s decision may have been good news, NARAL has not yet quit. And what’s worse is that this pro-abortion force may have an ally with George Leventhal, the president of Montgomery County Council.
Reporting from Daily Caller News Foundation includes a statement from Leventhal admitting that he finds the pregnancy centers “deceptive,” but also claiming that “he was simply responding to a constituent’s email, and the county is no longer fighting the issue.”
Most notable of all is the piece’s conclusion:
But he stood by his stance that the pro-life centers are misleading, and are distinctly a problem for vulnerable pregnant women, who would otherwise receive unbiased assistance and medical help. He rejected the idea that “legitimate” clinics, such as Planned Parenthood, would ever try to convince a woman to have an abortion.
“I don’t believe that happens anywhere,” he told TheDCNF.
What is absolutely certain is that by making such a statement, Leventhal shows his woeful ignorance of the mission of Planned Parenthood, which committed 327,653 abortions for 2013-2014. The abortion giant saw an increase in abortion, while a significant number of other services, including contraception, decreased.
The numbers don’t lie. An overwhelming 94 percent of pregnant women who go to Planned Parenthood have an abortion.
But what does that have to do with Planned Parenthood “try[ing] to convince a woman to have an abortion”?
Research shows that responses from women about their experiences speak to abortion counseling done in a less than adequate manner.
Sarah Terzo has compiled many pieces for Live Action, including one just recently, with testimonies from abortion clinic workers regarding counseling.
In one piece she mentions Jenny Higgins, who worked at an abortion clinic and “says there was no time to have any real counseling at the clinic at all[.]”
Another piece mentions research from David Reardon, which specifically mentions Planned Parenthood:
According to a survey publicized in David Reardon’s book Aborted Women: Silent No more, out of 252 women who experienced post-abortion trauma:
- 66% said their counselor’s advice was biased
- 40 to 60% described themselves as not having been certain of their decision prior to counseling
- 44% stated they were actively hoping to find an option other than abortion during counseling
- 5% reported that they were encouraged to ask questions
- 52 to 71% felt the questions were inadequately answered, sidestepped, or trivialized
- 90% said they were not given enough information to make an informed decision
- 83% said it was very likely that they would’ve chosen differently if they had not been so strongly encouraged to abort by others, including their abortion counselors
- 95% of women who had abortions at Planned Parenthood said that their Planned Parenthood counselors gave “…little or no biological information about the fetus which the abortion would destroy”(2)
The piece includes several other examples of problematic, biased counseling.
Sarah also includes statements from a former Planned Parenthood staffer, in another piece, which discusses the “counseling” there.
Another piece of hers, for ClinicQuotes, posted just this year, also demonstrates that “[l]ong counseling sessions in clinics annoy abortionists[.]”
And, using the book of Melinda Tankart Reist as a real-life example of the counseling women receive before their abortion, theunchoice.com reveals accounts of and issues with types of counseling received. This is the same young woman in Sarah’s most recent piece for Live Action News.
County officials should certainly know better before making such statements. The words from those who work in the actual industry, and from those who have experienced abortions themselves, show that these clinics are hardly legitimate. This is especially true when it comes to not pressuring women to abort, or letting them know of their options, and instead trying to get in as many abortions (and dollars) as possible.
