A pregnant New York Times reporter recently conducted an “undercover” investigation of three New York City centers allegedly offering pregnancy counseling. Two of them were crisis pregnancy centers, one of them was Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Center.
I was completely and totally unsurprised at her description of the silent alarm triggered by her response to seeing the ultrasound.
Did that tear trigger some alarm? Suddenly, two more people crowded into that tiny, darkened room. One asked if I was considering abortion.
Well, no. But I do sometimes find the prospect of a second child terrifying, and I said so. At which point Linda Marzulla, the center’s effusively warm director, administered a therapeutic technique that might be called the Love Bomb.
“The gift you’re carrying is perfection par excellence,” she told me. She commiserated about how scary pregnancy can be. She talked about the value of siblings, and the memory of her brother at their dying mother’s side.
Nor was I surprised that she was given misleading information that has not been supported by evidence-based research, such as the alleged link between abortion and breast cancer, and so-called post-abortion syndrome.
What surprised me, though, was that neither of the crisis pregnancy centers counseled the reporter on adoption (Planned Parenthood did). They told her that they would “work hard” to get “any kind of assistance—counseling, a job, a place to stay—” for her. I don’t know if this has already been done, but I would love to see someone follow this through all the way to see exactly what sort of assistance they offer. From what I understand, for the most part it involves turning women over to state assistance.
New York is following in the footsteps of Baltimore and Austin in considering a measure that would require crisis pregnancy centers to disclose whether or not they provide abortion services or referrals. These measures are controversial for some reason that is wholly beyond me. I am in favor of disclosure all around–for example, I would love to see obstetrical practices disclosing the fact that they do not attend VBACs or breeches right there on the front door. If I had a nickel for every woman I knew who got the 36-week bait-and-switch, I’d be eating nickel soup. Women deciding whether or not to carry to term would naturally also benefit from more information about their provider instead of less.
There was one little throwaway note that seemed interesting to me. She says:
As an abortion provider, Planned Parenthood is the only one of the three pregnancy counseling centers I visited with a financial stake in clients’ decisions.
I have to think more about this, but my gut reaction was where are CPCs getting their money?
Also, why in the world is this in the City Critic section? Just like how anything about birth gets shoved into Life and Style.
(h/t @KushielsMoon)
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In Texas CPC's get their monies from the state unfortunately. Many CPCs get their monies from state funding –
At least 20 US States provide funding for CPCs.[5] A report prepared for Henry Waxman found that from 2001 to 2005, 50 CPCs received $30 million in funding from the federal government.[1] By 2006, CPCs had received more than $60 million dollars of federal funding, including some funding earmarked for abstinence-only programs.[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_pregnancy_cen…
Over the past three years, the controversial rider creating the Texas “Alternatives to Abortion” program and its contractor, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network (TPCN), has shifted more than $3 million from preventive health screening and contraceptive services largely into unlicensed and unregulated crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), often staffed with non-medical volunteers, whose primary purpose is political in nature: to dissuade pregnant teenagers and women from choosing safe, legal abortion.
Unlike family planning clinics, CPCs do not provide women with health services such as gynecological exams and prenatal care. Rather, CPCs provide biased and often inaccurate information about the risks of safe and legal abortion care.
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are unlicensed, unregulated organizations, often staffed with non-medical volunteers, with the express purpose of persuading pregnant teenagers and women looking to terminate their pregnancies to opt for motherhood and adoption.
At the end of the first fiscal year of funding, the TPCN’s own progress reports revealed that the Texas “Alternatives to Abortion” program and its contractor, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network (TPCN), had only served 11 women at a cost of over $600,000 of taxpayer funds.
*WHERE DID ALL THAT MONEY GO???? Into Vincent Friedewald's pocket! He's their executive director.
The Texas Pregnancy Care Network (TPCN) is a little-known agency that incorporated as a non-profit shortly after the Texas Legislature created the “Alternatives to Abortion” program for groups that discourage women with unintended pregnancies from choosing abortion. In February 2006, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission awarded the TPCN a two-year, $5 million grant to start and operate the new program.
The TPCN has no history or performance record in women’s health, nor does its primary board and staff. The majority of the TPCN’s board members have no background in women’s health, no medical credentials, and no history of nonprofit or state-funded program administration. Instead, several board members have a strong background in the oil and gas and/or aeronautics industry. The TPCN’s executive director, Vincent Friedwald, has no known background in directing a nonprofit organization, managing taxpayer-funded programs, or in women’s health.20 Because the staff or board members of the TPCN had no known history in creating or administering such a program, the TPCN contracted with “Real Alternatives,” a Pennsylvania-based “alternatives to abortion” program in order to replicate their service delivery system in Texas.
For further reading – "Crisis Pregnancy Centers: A Hidden Threat to Women's Health?" Report http://www.prochoicetexas.org/assets/files/hidden…
*This report is specific to Texas but it's a great compilation of facts that express why giving so much to unregulated and unlicensed Crisis Pregnancy Centers is a bad idea.
CPC Watch operates on one simple principle: how can we claim that women are "free to choose" their reproductive destinies when fake clinics are pushing false information to tens of thousands of women all over the country?
Also . . . .
CPC Watch is a grassroots effort, supported by choice advocates from all walks of life, and is tied together by its website, an online resource for comprehensive reproductive information. The website’s mission is to expose the lies put forth by fake clinics, provide information about CPCs, list known CPCs, list the "warning signs" of a CPC, and provide the locations and contact information for legitimate healthcare providers where women can trust they're receiving the very best, unbiased medical information regarding their reproductive options. http://cpcwatch.org/