Pregnancy resource centers (PRCs, also known as “crisis pregnancy centers”) are generally small, locally grown organizations (like this) that provide women with emotional support and various means of assistance during and after an unplanned pregnancy.
While many post-abortive women report that they were made to feel as if abortion was the only possible solution to their unplanned pregnancy, PRCs exist to assure women that there are alternatives to abortion, and that there are loving individuals who will support them through the process.
In a one-state “investigation” by NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, pro-abortion researchers found all of this to be true – but, in a bizarre yet predictable twist, concluded that the life-saving work of PRCs is subversive and not truly helpful to women.
The investigation, called “Show Me Truth: an Investigation into Crisis Pregnancy Centers in St. Louis and Mid-Missouri,” yields a lengthy but poorly written report that catalogs various supposed negatives of pregnancy centers – such as the fact that they are usually staffed by volunteers, that they are often connected to religious messages, that they do not refer to abortion centers, and that they often provide women with information about fetal development.
Perusing the 49-page report, one may be waiting for the bombshell – the shocking findings with which NARAL will be able to conclude that pregnancy resource centers are evil places of vengeance and wrath. But the report is simply page after page of publicly known information about the legal and life-saving work of pregnancy resource centers and their volunteers.
Here is some of the shocking information obtained by one of NARAL’s undercover investigators at a St. Louis-area PRC (brace yourself: this may be too much to handle):
She said that it was a pro-life organization and that they didn’t perform abortions or give referrals for them. She also said that they had no actual medical staff — just counselors who were ‘very good at talking to people.’ She did the test in a back room and then invited us in so she could talk to us in private. She was actually pretty nice; she asked me whether or not I wanted Tyler to come in with me and didn’t seem to mind when I said yes.
Also there was a bucket of baby clothes/toys that were free and in one of the backrooms there were TONS of diapers. It seemed like they really wanted to give out stuff so people felt less overwhelmed having a baby.
–Stephanie, tester
NARAL took issue with one PRC trend in particular: the consistent refusal of PRCs to offer abortion referrals and their tendency to present parenting and adoption as the two possible paths at which a pregnancy comes to fruition.
“It is clear from our research,” they said, “that these CPCs endemically abuse options counseling by presenting motherhood as the only option and speaking of abortion, if at all, as murderous, traumatic, and destructive.” Consider the name: pregnancy resource centers. If these centers were affiliated in any way with abortion, they would not be pregnancy resource places, because an abortion ends a pregnancy, which means there is no need for resources.
And yet, NARAL is dumbfounded that pregnancy resource centers do not offer or promote abortion.
If they were looking for shock value, NARAL should have considered an undercover investigation of some of the late-term abortionists their organization works to keep in business, like Live Action did in its most recent investigation, Inhuman. That is cringe-worthy. Bemoaning volunteer-based organizations that promote abortion alternatives is not.
