So-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs) that masquerade as reproductive health clinics in order to dissuade women from seeking abortion services have long been a tactic of anti-abortion groups. But CPCs received some extra attention recently after a cover story in Time magazine profiled a CPC in North Carolina, and a story in the New York Daily News exposed a mobile CPC operating in front of reproductive health clinics in the Bronx.
CPCs like to suggest that their mission is simply to reduce the number of abortions. But the approach of CPCs in achieving that mission ultimately provides a great disservice to women by feeding them misleading and inaccurate medical information. Last year, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued a report about CPCs, which found that 20 out of the 23 centers he investigated (87 percent) provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion, including the false claim that abortion can cause breast cancer. To top it off, the centers in question had all received capacity-building funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
As Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care providers have always said, the best way to reduce the number of abortions is not through a campaign of misinformation and coercion, but through medically accurate education and expanded access to birth control. In fact, an estimated 293,000 abortions are averted by Planned Parenthood contraceptive services each year. How many abortions have been averted by contraceptive services at CPCs? Zero. Why? As the Time story reports,
What they will not offer is referral for birth control. Married clients wanting information on contraception are referred to their own doctor or pastor. But, as Wood [Deborah Wood, CEO of Asheville Pregnancy Support Services in Asheville, NC] explains, most clients are unmarried, and "the Bible clearly states that sex outside of marriage is against God's will for our lives."
Essentially, CPCs are serving as a mouthpiece for anti-abortion hardliners, who far from using proven measures to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, prefer to pretend that abstinence-only-until-marriage is a realistic expectation to have of every American woman and man.
Well, I’m not going to stand for it, and you don’t have to, either. Check out our patient alert on CPCs and tell everyone you know how they can spot a CPC.