Walking across campus one night, I became angry, outraged even, when I came across a certain flier that allegedly provided counseling services for unplanned pregnancies.
A week or so later, I saw the same flier on the bulletin board in the library, this one with two info tabs ripped off. My reaction this time was not anger, but concern. Not necessarily because I thought some of my fellow community members might be facing an unplanned pregnancy. Statistics show that half of American women will at some point in their lives experience an unintended pregnancy and I’m sure that more than a few on this campus already have. Rather, this advertisement for Birthright New London evoked such reactions because it is attempting to direct any Conn students facing an unintended pregnancy into their Crisis Pregnancy Center (hereafter CPC).
he goal of Birthright, and other centers like it, is to “keep women from having abortions.” While they claim that they “want you to know the many options available to you,” they present only options for carrying the pregnancy to term. While doing so is the right choice—and the right—for many women in such a situation, it is not a feasible option for many women, especially at our age.
On their website and in public areas, Birthright touts offers of free counseling and pregnancy tests, in order to target the most International seems to be moderate on the anti-abortion spectrum, claiming to refrain from engagement in “the public debate on abortion” (as if it could be boiled down to one monolithic argument). However, there are approximately 4000 CPCs in the U.S., and many of them are not so straightforward.
In fact, many use straight-up lies in order to further their agenda, making claims that are wildly inaccurate in order to manipulate women into keeping unplanned pregnancies. In addition to reporting false results from pregnancy tests, some other examples of bogus medical claims made by CPCs include linking abortion to breast cancer, mental illness, and infertility (none of these links exists). Not to mention the anti-choice favorite, “post-abortion syndrome,” a completely made-up condition designed to scare women away from a medically sound, proven safe procedure. Even more deplorable, these CPCs deliberately set themselves up in low-income vulnerable populations of women faced with unintended pregnancies.
During the Bush years, CPCs received over $30 million from the government. Additionally, many of the states that have mandatory abortion counseling laws have traditionally accepted CPCs as legitimate counseling centers, even going so far as to include them in state-sponsored directories, often with no warning of the limitations to this type of counseling. However, in 2006 Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) conducted a study on CPCs, and called attention to the gross misinformation being spread. Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-CA) has since introduced the “Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act.” Co-sponsored so far by 29 other Congressman, it seeks in part to take action against the misleading practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers. These two instances give hope that serious attention is finally being paid to women’s reproductive health issues.
After several unreturned phone calls to Birthright New London, I am relieved to see that they are seemingly nonfunctional. It is my hope that other women have experienced the same unresponsiveness and turned instead to more legitimate health clinics for counseling. At Conn, Student Health Services will provide counseling and referrals to a student on all of her possible options—abortion, adoption, or parenthood. Every woman has the right to complete, medically accurate information about her own body, regardless of where she or anyone else stands in the public debate on abortion.
