crack down on the brazen false advertising tactics of some deceptive, radical anti-choice Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or CPCs. Some federally funded crisis pregnancy centers have been proven to advertise false information about the services they provide in order to lure women seeking abortion information and then talk them out of the procedure.
Let me be clear---I object to any pregnancy center that uses deception to get women through the door. However, I wonder how many such centers can really be found, and I would be interested to see this "proof". Undoubtedly there are some centers that engage in deception, but most centers are honest. They are affiliated with larger organizations, like CareNet and Heartbeat International, that insist on honest advertising.
Is this bill really about a handful of dishonest centers out of thousands of honest ones? Maloney has a radical pro-choice position so it is hard for me to believe this bill has reasonable aims. Consider some of the other quotations from Maloney's site regarding this bill,
“People need to know the truth about Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs). Most do not offer comprehensive reproductive health care options or medically accurate information,” said Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation (NAF).
“New York City has seen firsthand how crisis pregnancy centers deliberately confuse women by establishing themselves near legitimate reproductive health care centers. These fake clinics have opened in close proximity to our Brooklyn and Bronx centers, misleading clients seeking the unbiased care that Planned Parenthood provides...As health care providers you need to be honest with your patients. Fake clinics are not honest. They are not health care providers and they need to stop pretending to be,” said Joan Malin, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of New York City.
Yes, I'm sure we can all agree that Planned Parenthood has an unbiased perspective---afterall, they don't have any monetary stake in a woman's decision do they? And actually, many pregnancy centers do offer medical services---professional pregnancy tests, STD testing, and ultrasounds. They are trained by medical professionals to offer medically accurate information, and the resources they use list references for all the medical facts. Many centers also offer ongoing support, parenting education, material aid such as diapers, clothes, furniture and numerous community resources. They do all of this free of charge. Hmm, sounds like a good deal---no wonder Planned Parenthood is concerned.
Maloney's site also offers background for this bill, linking it to Henry Waxman's (D-CA) 2006 report on pregnancy centers.
Waxman’s investigation detailed how some federally-funded CPCs misled investigators about the consequences of abortions. Staff at these centers told investigators, who posed as pregnant 17-year-olds, that abortion leads to breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness.
Actually, all of these claims are supported by numerous studies. Linking this new bill with Waxman's study demonstrates where this bill is coming from and what the purpose is. This bill is not about protecting women from deception, it is about preventing pregnancy centers from offering their services. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are businesses, this bill is an attempt to protect their profits, not women.
2 comments:
I wrote about Maloney's original announcement of the legislation last year (here); what I found most significant was the fact that they never identified a single actual victim of a CPC. The bill has no chance of passing and I suspect it was proposed solely to aid Planned Parenthood's dishonest fundraising campaign (see here). Interestingly, one lawsuit that did succeed late last year was one against an abortion clinic posing as a CPC (see here). It was funny to see all the pro-choice blogs condemn that suit as frivolous when it was file and predict that the plaintiffs would be heavily sanctioned; of course none of them ever reported on the actual outcome.
Thanks for your comment and information, I was not aware of that case, but I will check it out.
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