If someone told you that taxpayer money was being used to fund InfoWars, the Enquirer, or another fake news outlet, I image you’d be pretty ticked. However, at least---for the most part---they are relatively harmless in that the only people who believe they are real are extraordinarily stupid. (Like Trump supporters.)
But Crisis Pregnancy Centers are much more devious. They are anti-abortion “fake clinics” that are allowed to pretend they are real medical clinics. Their sole purpose is to entrap women who are seeking abortions, so they can either intimidate them or mislead them. They almost always give out patently false medical information, such as this nonsense direct from a handbook used by over 1,000 of these fake clinics from the anti-abortion group Heartbeat International:
- 35% of suicides are attributable to abortion
- Abortion doubles the risk of breast cancer
- Abortion is dangerous and deadly—usually due to fetus parts getting lodged in the lungs and heart
- Condoms don’t prevent pregnancy
They often give ultrasounds, and many times mislead women on how pregnant they are—and have even lied to them, saying that there is no time limit for having an abortion.
Since they aren’t clinics, they aren’t subject to HIPAA, which means none of the information of the people coming to the “clinics” has to be kept confidential. (And don’t think that threat isn’t used if the woman finds out what these “clinics” really are.)
Naturally, none of these fake clinics want to help once they intimidate or trick the woman carrying the pregnancy to term:
Since the rightwing controls all the levers of Florida’s government, not only do we have these fake clinics operating all over the state, not only are we paying them with taxpayer money, but Rick Scott just signed a bill that requires state funding to permanently go to these awful scam clinics!
HB 41 requires the Florida Department of Health to contract with the Florida Pregnancy Care Network, a crisis pregnancy network of clinics that offer free “pregnancy support services,” such as counseling and classes on pregnancy, childbirth and parenting.
With this bill, Gov. Scott and his legislative allies are putting politics over women’s health,” said Amy Weintraub, Reproductive Rights Program Director for Progress Florida. “Under no circumstances should taxpayers be forced to pay for these fake clinics that operate with virtually no oversight and judge, shame, and mislead women.”
Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates Executive Director Laura Goodhue added that by signing the bill, Scott “is demonstrating a total disregard for the truth, undermining a woman’s right to make her own informed medical decisions and denying her the respect and dignity she deserves.”
Rick Scott is trying to do an extreme makeover this election year by trying to get people to forget how awful he has been. (I documented over 170 horrible things he did in his first term alone.)
The best way to punish him is deny him the chance to hurt us any further.
Support Bill Nelson in defeating Rick Scott.