A yearlong investigation into crisis pregnancy centers reveals a
network of anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and anti-sex extremists
that is not only funded with your tax dollars, but is…
You probably think of people who are against
abortion, birth control, and premarital sex as being extremists. Yes,
they’re fighting at every turn to challenge Roe V Wade, but they are
only whittling it down. But the main right to make our own medical
choices is Constitutionally protected so everything is okay.
… But it’s not.
In Cosmopolitan’s August issue, Meaghan
Winter revealed alarming results from a yearlong investigation into
crisis pregnancy centers that show a network of anti-abortion,
anti-birth control, and anti-sex extremists that is not only funded with
your tax dollars, but is often the only option.
Winter
writes,
“… behind the scenes, an orchestrated network of donors, lawyers,
lobbyists, and state representatives supports the individual centers.”
It’s not just in red states, either. This is
happening all over the country, and you are paying for it with tens of
millions of federal and state tax dollars. Here’s one young woman’s
experience at Care Net center “that advertised free ultrasounds
alongside information on ’emergency contraception’ and ‘abortion
education’.”
As told to Cosmopolitan, “Nicole” was trying to get
an ultrasound so she could then travel hundreds of miles to get the
morning after pill:
Inside, a receptionist
behind a counter instructed Nicole to provide a urine sample in the
bathroom. Then a nurse and a younger woman, about Nicole’s age, brought
her to a small room with a couch. For 45 minutes, they showed her Bible
verses and pamphlets on adoption and an embryo’s development. Nicole
says, “The nurse really, really slowed down during the fetal pain part.
She said, ‘Here are the fingertips. The baby feels everything you’re
feeling.'” They told Nicole having an abortion might complicate future
pregnancies and cause suicidal thoughts — both common myths. This is
Bullshit, Nicole kept thinking, but you’re trying to make me think it’s
true.
During the ultrasound, the nurse said the images
weren’t clear and she needed to do a transvaginal scan. “She didn’t
explain anything or say, ‘We’re going to stick this cone inside you,'”
Nicole says, agitated. The nurse displayed the embryo on a screen,
pointed to its features, and printed the images. The younger women
prayed over Nicole and asked to be invited to her baby shower. The next
week, ultrasound results in hand, Nicole drove more than six hours,
following a two-lane highway across Wyoming and staying overnight in a
hotel, to reach an abortion provider in Denver.
These places are the only place to turn:
Every year, thousands
of women like Nicole seek help at what appear to be secular medical
clinics but are actually 'christian' anti-abortion centers. Throughout the
United States, there are at least 3,000 crisis pregnancy centers, many
of which belong to two religious anti-abortion organizations—Care Net
and Heartbeat International. Some women arrive at those centers in
search of 'christian' brainwashing or free diapers, but the vast majority
are looking for professional advice to help them navigate unplanned
pregnancies.
Increasingly, pregnancy centers are what’s
available. Around the country, access to abortion has eroded
dramatically. As abortion regulations shutter medical clinics offering
the full range of options, a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy finds
herself in a very different landscape, one in which a pregnancy center
is her most visible, most affordable—and sometimes the only—place to
turn.
How did we get here with a Democratic President who
supports women’s health and just found a way to ensure that Hobby Lobby
decision wouldn’t mean that women no longer had access to birth control
through their insurance? Not only have Republicans been pushing
anti-liberty bills in states across the country, especially since 2010
when they really picked up steam, but our Congress has aided and abetted
them. Sure, Congress is unable to pass immigration reform and they
can’t manage a jobs bill, but they always have time to restrict women’s
rights.
Winter explained:
In 2013, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services awarded the center a federal
grant of $352,125 to teach abstinence education in public schools. Over
the years, government funding for abstinence programs has aided the
mushrooming of pregnancy centers. Despite proposals by the Obama
administration to reduce funding, Congress has continued and even
increased it in recent years, explains Monica Rodriguez, president of
the nonprofit Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United
States. This spring, Congress has already set aside $75 million for the
latest abstinence-only-until marriage program — an increase of 50
percent. The House budget proposed in June would double the program that
funds Options Pregnancy Center, while eliminating all funding for
health centers that provide birth control.
Of course, the only way to reduce abortions really
is to provide birth control. Abstinence Only doesn’t work, and there is
no better proof of this than their spokesperson Bristol Palin, who is on
her second premarital pregnancy. 2015 began with 332 anti-choice provisions in just three months.
It’s absolutely an alarming and profound theft of
liberty for our tax dollars to fund a religious delusion against a
Constitutionally protected right. That young women with few resources
are forced to drive out of state to get a safe abortion, after
undergoing a shame and guilt inducing lecture and invasive and
unnecessary medical procedures, is outrageous.
No one is “pro-abortion”, but those who have though
it through realize that in order to be pro-women’s liberty, we must
ensure that women have the final say over their bodies. We must protect
the right of each citizen to make their own medical decisions and be in
charge of their own bodies. The precedent otherwise is unthinkable.
We
try to prevent abortion by doing the one thing that works– making birth
control accessible. Shaming women by lying to them isn’t working. But
everyone already knows that. And yet, our tax dollars are funding the
opposite of “religious freedom”. This country was founded on the
principle that we would be free from religion if we chose, and that
religious extremists would not get into power to make law for good
reason.
