Our tax dollars at work funding antiabortion bunk
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER,
St.Petersburg Times
Published July 23, 2006
If you're willing to lie, deceive and intimidate others for your beliefs, the Christian Right needs you to staff the nation's Crisis Pregnancy Centers.
A new congressional study exposes what goes on in these centers for what it is: religiously grounded antiabortion stagecraft designed to lure vulnerable, pregnant women and use lies to scare them out of ending their pregnancy.
So what is the government doing funding them?
There are about 4,000 CPCs in the country, compared to 2,000 abortion clinics. The CPCs are often affiliated with fundamentalist and evangelical religious organizations and churches. Their modus operandi is to appear to be a legitimate medical facility, like a Planned Parenthood clinic - in fact they are often in the same buildings or shopping centers as abortion clinics, hoping to confuse clients. But when unsuspecting women, usually young and low-income, come in for a free pregnancy test or ultrasound, they are bombarded with antiabortion propaganda that has little relationship to medical truth.
Since 2001, and President Bush's push to redirect tax money to faith-based institutions, the CPCs have received more than $30-million in federal funds, much of it for abstinence-only education, but some for strengthening their operations. Florida spends $2-million a year for a "pregnancy support" hot line that directs women to CPCs, and some of the state's "Choose Life" license plate money goes to the centers.
That's millions of tax dollars underwriting religiously motivated fraud that can adversely impact women's lives and health.
A new congressional study, requested by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., found that 20 of 23 federally funded centers investigated used a variety of well-worn scare tactics. Female congressional staffers who called pretending to be 17 and possibly pregnant were told by CPC counselors that abortion significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, future infertility and suffering "postabortion syndrome."
It's all bunk. A 1997 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found no causal relationship between abortion and breast cancer, consistent with the overwhelming consensus of the medical community. As to subsequent infertility, there is no more risk of that from an abortion than from giving birth. And "postabortion syndrome" is a made-up neurosis that is not recognized by any legitimate psychiatric association.
The medical facts are that a woman is 11 times more likely to die from complications from childbirth than from an abortion. But that never gets mentioned by the CPCs.
Katie Stephens, an options counselor at a Planned Parenthood affiliate and an abortion clinic in Gainesville, says she sees the CPCs' handiwork all the time. Stephens estimates that about 10 percent of her clients first had contact with a CPC. She says they often come to her harboring "real extreme" ideas about the dangers of abortion. They've been told that there is a good chance they won't be able to have future children, Stephens says, and some have asked her, "Am I going to die?"
Deb Berry, writing for Orlando Weekly magazine in 2003, described her experience with a CPC years ago when she became pregnant with an abusive boyfriend's child. Looking for an abortion referral, she responded to an ad that read "Pregnant? Scared? We can help." When she told the Orlando-area center that she had no money, wasn't ready to be a mother and her boyfriend was abusive, a staffer told her to "just put your faith in God." And as to the abuse, she was assured that "he'll change once he sees his beautiful little baby."
Yeah, right.
The CPCs' true purpose is not to serve women in trouble but to proselytize and block women from receiving valid information about their health and options.
Many CPCs like to claim that they will provide prenatal care to women who plan to have their children, but a telling report by the Christian conservative group, the Family Research Council, worried aloud about the diversion of too many resources to future moms. The report said that "there are sharply rising numbers of women coming to the centers who are not 'at risk' for abortion. These women have decided to carry their children to term and come in for material assistance or other services."
"These trends," the report notes, "could threaten the primary mission of the centers - to reach women at risk for abortion."
It would be comforting to think that this is just the work of a narrow group of extremists and leave it at that. But when our tax dollars are supporting this dangerous lunacy and when the president vetoes a bill that supports promising, life-saving medical research in order to protect the "life" of a cluster of cells, the delusional have truly taken over. Medical fraud is official policy when abortion politics are at play.
© Copyright, St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.
St.Petersburg Times
Published July 23, 2006
If you're willing to lie, deceive and intimidate others for your beliefs, the Christian Right needs you to staff the nation's Crisis Pregnancy Centers.
A new congressional study exposes what goes on in these centers for what it is: religiously grounded antiabortion stagecraft designed to lure vulnerable, pregnant women and use lies to scare them out of ending their pregnancy.
So what is the government doing funding them?
There are about 4,000 CPCs in the country, compared to 2,000 abortion clinics. The CPCs are often affiliated with fundamentalist and evangelical religious organizations and churches. Their modus operandi is to appear to be a legitimate medical facility, like a Planned Parenthood clinic - in fact they are often in the same buildings or shopping centers as abortion clinics, hoping to confuse clients. But when unsuspecting women, usually young and low-income, come in for a free pregnancy test or ultrasound, they are bombarded with antiabortion propaganda that has little relationship to medical truth.
Since 2001, and President Bush's push to redirect tax money to faith-based institutions, the CPCs have received more than $30-million in federal funds, much of it for abstinence-only education, but some for strengthening their operations. Florida spends $2-million a year for a "pregnancy support" hot line that directs women to CPCs, and some of the state's "Choose Life" license plate money goes to the centers.
That's millions of tax dollars underwriting religiously motivated fraud that can adversely impact women's lives and health.
A new congressional study, requested by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., found that 20 of 23 federally funded centers investigated used a variety of well-worn scare tactics. Female congressional staffers who called pretending to be 17 and possibly pregnant were told by CPC counselors that abortion significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, future infertility and suffering "postabortion syndrome."
It's all bunk. A 1997 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found no causal relationship between abortion and breast cancer, consistent with the overwhelming consensus of the medical community. As to subsequent infertility, there is no more risk of that from an abortion than from giving birth. And "postabortion syndrome" is a made-up neurosis that is not recognized by any legitimate psychiatric association.
The medical facts are that a woman is 11 times more likely to die from complications from childbirth than from an abortion. But that never gets mentioned by the CPCs.
Katie Stephens, an options counselor at a Planned Parenthood affiliate and an abortion clinic in Gainesville, says she sees the CPCs' handiwork all the time. Stephens estimates that about 10 percent of her clients first had contact with a CPC. She says they often come to her harboring "real extreme" ideas about the dangers of abortion. They've been told that there is a good chance they won't be able to have future children, Stephens says, and some have asked her, "Am I going to die?"
Deb Berry, writing for Orlando Weekly magazine in 2003, described her experience with a CPC years ago when she became pregnant with an abusive boyfriend's child. Looking for an abortion referral, she responded to an ad that read "Pregnant? Scared? We can help." When she told the Orlando-area center that she had no money, wasn't ready to be a mother and her boyfriend was abusive, a staffer told her to "just put your faith in God." And as to the abuse, she was assured that "he'll change once he sees his beautiful little baby."
Yeah, right.
The CPCs' true purpose is not to serve women in trouble but to proselytize and block women from receiving valid information about their health and options.
Many CPCs like to claim that they will provide prenatal care to women who plan to have their children, but a telling report by the Christian conservative group, the Family Research Council, worried aloud about the diversion of too many resources to future moms. The report said that "there are sharply rising numbers of women coming to the centers who are not 'at risk' for abortion. These women have decided to carry their children to term and come in for material assistance or other services."
"These trends," the report notes, "could threaten the primary mission of the centers - to reach women at risk for abortion."
It would be comforting to think that this is just the work of a narrow group of extremists and leave it at that. But when our tax dollars are supporting this dangerous lunacy and when the president vetoes a bill that supports promising, life-saving medical research in order to protect the "life" of a cluster of cells, the delusional have truly taken over. Medical fraud is official policy when abortion politics are at play.
© Copyright, St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.
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