AU Students for Choice defied all decency last week, holding an event called,
"Exposing Fake Clinics." By fake clinics they did not mean abortion clinics that consistently fail to meet health standards, but pregnancy resource centers. Here is a response from AU Students for Life President Katie Koch:
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) serve a critical role in helping low-income mothers and women facing unplanned pregnancies. One of the main reasons women cite as a motivating force for getting an abortion is that they feel they have no support. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group affiliated with Planned Parenthood, 73 percent of women polled said that they sought an abortion because they could not afford a baby right now.
CPCs seek to help women who want to keep their children but feel they must have an abortion for financial reasons. They provide free diapers, free baby clothes, free maternity clothes, free parenting classes, and some even provide housing for pregnant women who have been abandoned by their boyfriends, husbands or families. Their support for women making a choice other than abortion is invaluable.
As for women who are unsure if they are pregnant or who are still deciding between abortion and continuing their pregnancy, pregnancy care centers provide a welcoming and judgment free alternative to abortion clinics. They offer free pregnancy tests (and some offer free HIV testing as well).
Unfortunately, these clinics have been maligned by pro-abortion groups. While groups (including AU Students for Choice) will claim that CPCs scare women and hide information from them, they do no such thing. AU Students for Life works closely with a the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Care Center, a CPC in the D.C. area. At this center, volunteer peer counselors are not allowed to tell a woman that abortion is evil, but they will present her with facts about the procedure that an abortion clinic will not.
For example, CPCs will not hide emotional side effects like abortion clinics will. AUSC and abortion providers have made a devastating error in claiming that emotional side effects are non-existent. I know many post-abortive women and I have heard countless others speak and their pain is real. These women are telling their personal stories, and pro-abortion groups should not be so quick to call them liars.
The clinics in D.C. (including the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Care Center) do not pretend to be more than they are. They do not offer medical services and would never claim to. Do they offer information about all choices? Yes. They will not turn away a women considering abortion and they cannot tell her that abortion is wrong for her. CPCs simply show women another choice.
If Students for Choice was truly pro “choice” they wouldn’t be attacking these centers for providing women another option than abortion. Planned Parenthood may claim that they offer neutral information about each option, but this isn’t true. They are the largest abortion provider in the nation (over 300,000 abortions each year) and cannot be neutral when they stand to make millions of dollars each year on the procedure.
CPCs fill a critical social role and they will help women find medical care through referrals. They are not “clinics,” do not claim to be and do not falsely advertise. It doesn't matter if you are pro-choice or pro-life: the centers help women exploring different options and that's the bottom line.
AU Students for Choice defied all decency last week, holding an event called, "Exposing Fake Clinics." By fake clinics they did not mean abortion clinics that consistently fail to meet health standards, but pregnancy resource centers. Here is a response from AU Students for Life President Katie Koch:
