At Think Progress, Amanda Michelle Gomez writes about Savannah Low, a pro-choice advocate who mistakenly volunteered for a crisis pregnancy center in Sherman, Texas. These centers are propaganda fronts for the forced-birther movement whose one major goal is to keep women from obtaining abortions. Staff at these clinics rarely include any medical personal, tell lies about the impacts of abortion, falsely advertise their services, will often not discuss contraception, and will not refer women who come through the door to clinics that offer abortions. Here’s Gomez:
Even when people don’t want an abortion, the clinic isn’t very helpful. “Women come in asking to use [the ultrasound machine] to see if their baby is healthy and find out the sex. She turns them down because the only purpose of that ultrasound machine is to convince people not to have an abortion. They provide no medical service,” Low said. True Options staff told ThinkProgress that their nurses aren’t trained to determine a baby’s sex, and are only able to identify if a person is pregnant.
Low isn’t the only one who has been misled. It’s easy to get tripped up, as these anti-choice centers masquerade as family planning clinics that offer comprehensive medical services and advice. They do not inform visitors upfront that their clinics don’t provide abortions. And the result could be hours of wasted time for pregnant people seeking abortions — at perhaps the most time-sensitive moment in their lives.
Crisis pregnancy centers aren’t confined to Texas. Nationwide, there are about 2,500 such centers. In Texas, Virginia, South Dakota, Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania … indeed, in 34 states, CPCs get taxpayer money to tell their lie. The money is diverted from federal abstinence-only programs, from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, from funding that used to go to Planned Parenthood centers, and in Texas, even from an environmental quality program.
The centers aren’t new. The first one was launched half a century ago in Hawai’i. Today, there are thousands of them across America, far more than clinics that offer abortion as part of their reproductive health services. Robert Pearson gave birth to them and the deceptive techniques they use.
In 1994, his ideology in the matter was made clear to his audience: “Obviously, we’re fighting Satan [...] A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her kill her baby. Therefore, when she calls and says, ‘Do you do abortions?’ we do not tell her, No, we don’t do abortions.”
And that is just the beginning of the deceit. Women are told that if they get an abortion, they’ll have a greater risk of breast cancer, infertility and psychological trauma. It’s a rare CPC that even discusses contraception. That’s because most of them think non-procreative sex itself is beyond the pale. And yet millions of dollars of federal and state money continue to be poured into these propaganda centers no matter how much women’s health and state programs suffer as a consequence.
In Texas, the tax money that used to go to Planned Parenthood and now goes instead to the crisis pregnancy centers has been in the millions of dollars. So what are the consequences of this? Amanda Marcotte at Salon writes:
Rates of gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia are on the rise. Texas health officials report alarming “clusters” of HIV transmission popping up in 16 areas of the state. The rate of second-trimester abortions, which are more painful and expensive, is on the rise as women in the state have more difficulty getting contraception and early-term abortions. Texas now has the worst maternal mortality rate in the developed world and has fallen behind the rest of the country when it comes to the decline in teen births. The state’s Medicaid system is straining as the number of births to low-income women rose, in part because they lack affordable or convenient access to contraception.
Dr. Dana Kusnir, a Dallas abortion provider associated with Physicians for Reproductive Health, says it’s no surprise that forced-birther activists with no medical training and no medical capabilities would fail to fill the needs of the women cut off by taking away state reimbursements for services provided at low-cost by Planned Parenthood health services facilities.
Texas Democrats have fought the diversion of state funds to the CPCs. But their passion is no match for the solid Republican grip on the legislature’s majority. In the past decade, tens of millions in tax revenue have gone to the non-profit Texas Pregnancy Care Network and its array of pregnancy centers. In April, the state legislature boosted funding for Alternatives to Abortion to $38 million over a two-year period, a $20 million increase over previous years. A2A provides funding for scores of CPCs in the state.
As noted above, despite the horrible outcomes, 34 states provide tax funding to CPCs. You would think that the fact they are destroyers of women’s health, not healers, would spur state legislatures to stop this wasteful, counterproductive spending. But forced-birther ideology has a tight grip on most of those legislatures and on women’s bodies.