Last week, I mentioned that Payne McLachlan, the co-coordinator of Students for Reproductive Health at St. Olaf College, called out a crisis pregnancy center just minutes from St. Olaf's campus in Northfield, Minnesota for its use of scare tactics and outright lies in order to dissuade women from having an abortion. In response, the center's director fired off a shrill-laden email urging McLachlan to "put on your big girl panties" and stop spewing lies about what her center is doing.
Well, McLachlan, who is a guy, isn't taking this lying down. He started a petition calling for the Northfield CPC to stop putting out lies to women who are already scared out of their wits. Sign here.
In an email I got about this petition, McLachlan detailed some of the lies that are in this center's material. Among them:
"All forms of emergency contraception have the potential to alter the uterine lining enough to prevent the new life from implanting. This is not a contraceptive effect, but abortifacient, causing an early abortion."
“Only eight out of one hundred women will become pregnant after a single act of intercourse mid-cycle (when ovulation occurs). By taking emergency contraception before knowing your pregnant, you may be putting yourself at risk for no reason.”
"It saddens me each time a patient describes this – typically a student who always puts career first, and is finally getting a PhD at 38 or 40. She’s thrilled to reach that milestone, but aches for another: to feel a new life inside her, to give birth."
And at least one statement in this material is not just inaccurate, but potentially dangerous. It claims that STDs usually disappear with time.
The frightening thing is that these outfits are almost completely unregulated. Any doctor who put out this claptrap would lose his license--if he wasn't driven out of business first. Let's let this center know that we surround them. Sign here.