After years of staying mostly out of the spotlight, pro-life crisis pregnancy centers are increasingly coming under political attack in cities nationwide where some legislators and mayors are demanding the centers explicitly declare — in exterior signs and even in ads — that they do not perform abortions.
Such legislation, pro-lifers say, is not only unconstitutional but also could lead to an uptick in abortions because some women — who otherwise would be open to hearing about alternatives to abortion — will be deterred from even entering the crisis pregnancy centers’ buildings.
The latest city is New York, which has approved a law requiring crisis pregnancy centers to post signs at the entrance and in the waiting room stating they do not perform abortions or provide abortion referrals. If a center does not have a licensed medical provider on staff, then that information, too, must be posted on the signs. Although other cities have passed similar laws, New York’s law goes a step further by requiring the information also be disclosed in advertisements and to people who call the centers.
Crisis pregnancy centers are needed, supporters say, because Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is biased in its counseling and has a financial interest in guiding women to abortions. In 2009, Planned Parenthood performed 340 abortions for every one adoption referral it made, its own data show.
Crisis pregnancy centers often provide such free services as pregnancy tests, ultrasound exams, prenatal care, childbirth classes, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, post-abortion counseling and material assistance. Abortion clinics typically do not provide many of these services.
Thus far, the 52 crisis pregnancy centers in Alabama have not been a target of politicians.
“What a blessing it is to live in a state like Alabama where we have a governor and legislators who value life,” said Lisa Hogan, executive director of Sav-A-Life Vestavia.
Hogan suggested that Alabamians pray that there will be people in power in New York who will help change the law.
“But even with the restrictions they have had placed on them, the pregnancy resource centers in New York will not stop doing what they are doing,” she predicted.
Still Melinda Delahoyde, president of Care Net, a national network of pregnancy resource centers, said the New York City Council’s move to hamstring the centers could mean the city’s astronomical abortion rate “could skyrocket even further.” According to recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, 41 percent of pregnancies in New York end in abortion.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed the law March 16, saying it’s needed to make sure women are “fully informed.”
Matt Bowman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), said pro-choicers want to “shut down the real help and hope that pregnancy centers offer women.” ADF, a pro-life legal group, filed a suit against New York on March 18. “There’s not any question that crisis pregnancy centers are being targeted,” Bowman said.
“You can read the pamphlets from the abortion movement targeting them. It’s not hidden. I think these attacks on pregnancy centers are an attempt to distract from the growing national scandals in the abortion industry and to give women fewer choices when they experience an unexpected pregnancy.”
For pro-lifers, the good news is that courts — so far — are mostly siding with them. In January, a federal judge struck down a Baltimore law that required crisis pregnancy centers to post exterior signs stating they do not provide abortions or make referrals for abortions. In ruling that the law violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause, the judge, Marvin Garbis, wrote, “It is for the provider — not the government — to decide when and how to discuss abortion and birth-control methods.”
Planned Parenthood claims on its website that crisis pregnancy centers have a history of “giving women wrong, biased information to scare them into not having abortions.” (BP, TAB)
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