Cheap Shot at Crisis Pregnancy Centers Nothing More than Big Abortion Lies Cloaked in Bad Comedy
This week a satirical video went viral that slammed crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), claiming they deceived women and were run by con-artists. Major online media outlets praised the vulgar video running headlines including, “Samantha Bee Exposes Just How Terrifying Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are,” and “Samantha Bee explores the shocking lies of anti-abortion ‘crisis pregnancy centers’”.
The problem with praising this “exposé”? The skit is riddled with lies about these pro-life pregnancy centers, and serves as propaganda for the National Abortion Federation (NAF) whose president is prominently featured in the video.
From claiming CPCs mask themselves as fake abortion clinics and falsify test results to trick women into having their babies to featuring a mother who announces that if she could do it all over again she would have aborted her son, the video is a galling window into the rationale and mindset of abortion activists.
Here are just a few of the many falsehoods perpetuated about crisis pregnancy centers by the video, and why their assertions are so deadly wrong.
1. The tactics of crisis pregnancy centers are misleading and harmful to women.
The video claims that using names such as “Pregnancy Care Clinic,” “Birthright International,” and “Pregnancy Resources” is deceitful to women. Yet, by their very nature, CPCs are centers that help women make decisions about their pregnancy. A name that points to this facet is not deceptive but in fact descriptive. Instead, is it not grossly misleading to use names such as “Planned Parenthood” to describe an organization whose primary function is to strip a woman of her motherhood?
Later in the video, NAF President and CEO Vicki Saporta seems to criticize CPCs for giving away free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. This one is astounding to me. How can providing a woman with more information to make her decision (i.e. pregnancy tests and ultrasounds) be misleading? Isn’t this the most empowering thing we can do for women? If a pregnant woman is really just carrying a blob of tissue, what are they so afraid that the ultrasound will reveal?
Unlike the abortion industry that continually fights against laws requiring clinics to treat women as equal human beings and be given all medical information pertinent to a potential abortion, CPCs treat women as the strong and capable people they are. CPCs entrust women with ALL the facts they need to make a decision for themselves and their child.
2. Crisis pregnancy centers falsify medical results to trick women into keeping their babies.
Yes, they really made this claim. The president of NAF claims that CPCs provide false medical results, pretending that a woman is further along in her pregnancy than she actually is to trick her into keeping her baby. Not only is this a ridiculous accusation to lob against all crisis pregnancy centers, but it shows the intellectual dishonesty of Samantha Bee and her followers.
In fact, it is abortion clinics, not CPCs, who hide irrefutable facts about fetal development and deny access to sonograms and ultrasound technology to their clients. They fear, and rightfully so, that their clients might not agree with them that the beating heart and the squirming image they see on the screen is just a blob of tissue. The ACLJ’s upcoming documentary “Abortion Inc.” features multiple accounts of women who had abortion clinics lie to them about how developed their baby was in order to convince them to have an abortion.
In the debate on life, there is only one side deceptively pretending to provide the full spectrum of health care services to women. There’s only one side treating these women as if they are too weak to handle all of the pertinent information needed to make a life or death decision like abortion. And it's not crisis pregnancy centers.
3. There are no negative effects to abortions.
In the video, the NAF president boldly asserts that there are no negative effects to abortions, claiming that CPCs manipulate women by telling them of potential harmful consequences to having an abortion.
The effects of abortion on women vary from case to case and person to person. But to pretend as if there has never been a single credible study showing a positive correlation between abortion and negative health effects is deceitful and anti-science.
The British Journal of Psychiatry published a peer-reviewed study on the correlation between abortion and adverse mental health. A study on young women in New Zealand found similar results. Another review of the evidence found that while most studies are methodologically flawed and informed by political agendas, there are correlations between abortion and negative physical and mental health effects.
For those of us with friends who have had abortions, this shouldn’t be surprising. Thousands of women have shared their testimonies of the devastating effects of abortion.
4. Crisis pregnancy centers convince women to keep their babies and then disappear.
The video prominently features a mother who visited a crisis pregnancy center thinking it was an abortion clinic and then decided to have her baby. She claims that once she delivered her son, the CPC disappeared without a trace. She said that although she loves her son, if she had it to do all over again, she would choose to abort her son.
Calloused to the devastating consequences of broadcasting a mother’s testimony that she wishes she had aborted her son, the sketch tries to perpetuate the trope that pro-lifers only care about the child in the womb.
Yet, CPCs and the pro-life movement have proven time and time again that this is simply not true of our movement on the whole. The CPCs I have worked with in my community provide licensed counseling services for both mothers and fathers, parenting classes, networks of babysitters, diapers, clothes, and post-partum care. They believe as I do, that to be pro-life means to be pro abundant life for all. They want to empower women and men to not only just have their baby, but to be loving and involved mothers and fathers. They help with job training and job acquisition. They serve the mother and the child, and the father if he is in the picture.
Watching videos like this and hearing the lies of the abortion industry and their allies makes me angry. The women and men at CPCs who walk alongside mothers and fathers in the midst of crisis should not be vilified but thanked. They are the true feminists, as they celebrate the unique ability of a woman to bear a child and believe that she is fully capable of handling all the pertinent information regarding her pregnancy. The abortion agenda claims that abortion is necessary for female equality. Yet true feminism, found in the halls of CPCs across the country, proclaims that women are valuable and equal to men just as they are.
But more than anger, I am saddened for those who so ardently and callously scream that abortion is no big deal. Distracted by their rage and political agenda, they miss out on the profound goodness inherent in protecting and nurturing new life. They are unable to experience the joy of walking alongside a woman in the midst of crisis, and helping her to see just how beautiful and powerful she really is.
I believe that many of these “activists” truly want to stand for the underdog, yet their blind devotion to abortion pits them against the most voiceless members of our society. They are forced to do logical cartwheels and backflips to justify ending the lives of innocent children.
And they can’t stand it. So they mock the volunteers who pour their blood, sweat, and tears to walk alongside women of every socioeconomic class, race, ethnicity, and religion who have an unexpected pregnancy.
Life is significant. It has purpose and value. And these truths conflict with the falsehoods upon which the house of abortion has been constructed. And the sound of a small beating heart is all it takes to topple their house of cards.