Recently, pro-abortion actress and comedian Melissa McCarthy claimed that Planned Parenthood was doing “superhero work,” but her effusive praise was misplaced. While the nation’s largest abortion provider claims to be an indispensable piece of the healthcare landscape, in reality, only 3.3% of reproductive age women in the United States go to Planned Parenthood for services, and women can receive those same services (minus abortion) from Federally Qualified Health Centers across the country, which vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood centers.
While Planned Parenthood’s own sense of self-importance is exaggerated (and dutifully propped up by celebrities and the media), it is pregnancy resource centers that are truly performing superhero work every day, despite aggressive misinformation campaigns launched by abortion advocates.
Care… For Free
While one of Planned Parenthood’s most recent marketing slogans is “Care. No Matter What,” pregnancy resource centers consistently provide care for pregnant women and their children… for free. Pregnancy resource centers range in what free services they offer, with most providing free pregnancy tests, limited obstetric ultrasounds, and options counseling for abortion-vulnerable women. Additionally, many provide STI/STD testing free of charge. Increasingly, pregnancy resource centers are connecting women who regret taking the abortion pill with doctors who can prescribe the abortion pill reversal progesterone protocol.
Pregnancy resource centers usually go even further, assisting women who choose to parent with classes about childbirth, parenting, financial literacy, or anger management. Most centers work with organizations that coordinate help with housing, jobs, bill payment, and more. Centers also range in terms of the free items they provide, from offering diapers and baby clothes to bigger-ticket items like car seats, cribs, and strollers. In fact, a Lozier Institute report found that 2,700 pregnancy resource centers provided over $266.7 million in goods and services in 2019 alone.
Medical pregnancy centers are expanding
While abortion advocates parrot the “fake clinics” claim ad nauseam in reference to pregnancy resource centers (by which they usually mean that the centers will not commit or provide referrals for abortions), the reality is that more and more centers each year are transitioning to medical model pregnancy centers. While there is nothing wrong with pregnancy resource centers that “only” provide free pregnancy tests, options counseling, and referrals for ultrasounds, prenatal care, and other services, fully 79% of the 2,700 centers surveyed for the Lozier Institute Report did provide medical services — meaning that at a minimum, trained technicians who met NIFLA, Heartbeat International, or CareNet standards offered limited obstetric ultrasounds. About 30% of centers also provided STI/STD testing.
Additionally, Live Action News reported earlier this year on two organizations leading the way in providing full-spectrum reproductive health care that respects the dignity of the woman and the mother-child bond: Obria and Guiding Star Project.
READ: How pro-life pregnancy centers can survive public attacks from abortion advocates
Obria president Kathleen Eaton Bravo commented on the need to offer women’s health care throughout the reproductive lifespan, stating that when she started Obria, she knew she “need[ed] to go upstream with a proactive model to reach women before they go down the slippery slope that leads to an unplanned pregnancy… In order to be able to get [the women] in, I had to be able to offer the services that they were looking for” for regular gynecological care. “I needed to be able to do cervical cancer screening, STI testing, Pap smears, breast exams, fertility awareness methods, abortion pill reversal, and preconception care.”
Despite the relentless attempts to lie and smear the good work of pregnancy resource centers (including efforts to falsely leave PRCs unsatisfactory online reviews), hundreds of thousands of women each year continue to benefit from their superhero work. Babies are saved, women’s lives are changed, and families are strengthened.
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