Posted on 10/11/2010 6:25:33 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Imagine a young woman riding the subway, consumed by her thoughts: she is pregnant, considering abortion, but unsure of where to turn. She looks up midcommute and notices a sign with three bold words, one beneath the other: “Free abortion alternatives.” At the bottom of the sign are several phone numbers that will lead her to any one of 12 E.M.C. FrontLine Pregnancy Centers around New York City.
The centers — crisis pregnancy centers — provide support for women who would like to continue their pregnancies but are in dire financial straits. They provide useful social service referrals and offer a sympathetic ear for women continuing their pregnancies.
They do not, however, provide a full range of alternatives (like the morning-after pill) or condone all choices. To the contrary, they oppose abortion, and their staff members try their hardest to talk women out of having one, even if that means, according to Planned Parenthood of New York City, showing them graphic images and telling them that “God will never forgive you.”
A yearlong investigation by Naral Pro-Choice New York found that crisis pregnancy centers — in addition to the E.M.C. centers, there are at least four others in the city — feed women information that has been medically refuted (including an old standby, rejected by the National Cancer Institute, that abortions cause higher rates of breast cancer).
Partly in response to findings in that report, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, Democrat of Manhattan, are proposing legislation that would require the stance of these crisis pregnancy centers to be clear to all women who visit them — either intentionally, or by accident while seeking a Planned Parenthood clinic across the street
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Imagine, there are places which actually WANT your baby to live.
The definition of "alternative" means another choice. Another option. Something in place of another. Something other than abortion. Two mutually exclusive possibilities, not just variations of one possibility.
Exactly how is that misleading?
And, as an added bonus, some poor confused young girl can actually feel that she gave her child a chance at life and blessed another couple who could actually raise her child to grow up to be something other than a cosmetic ingredient.
So by Planned Parenthood’s logic, shouldn’t they be required to post notices that they do, in fact, teach you how to plan to be a parent? Rather, they counsel you to kill your baby to prevent you from ever becoming a parent.
Planned Parenthood and the multi-billion dollar abortion industry are huge laundromats for Democrat campaign money, so it is only natural that the New York Times will do whatever it can to help its party.
Nothing to see here.
If they are so concerned about young women being given ALL the information, why do they fight tooth and toenail to keep these young women from seeing their own ultrasound?
I whole-heartedly agree.
You'd think if someone was pro-choice they would want to have all the options available.
Hmmmm.
A person is substantially deluded when they think that telling newly pregnant women about alternatives to destroying their own child is somehow denying them the right to “choose”. Well, in this oft-made complaint by supporters of womb flushing, they tell us that they cannot even use honest language to describe what choice they would advocate is the best one.
I speak as one whose wife has spent the better part of a decade sitting in the counseling room with countless newly pregnant women and helping them avoid making the greatest mistake of their lives, and who now sees many happy mothers with their precious and priceless children.
My little sister stumbled into one of these places thinking it was an abortion clinic. She was in the early stages. They talked her out of it and now she has a beautiful 14 month old son, and is very happy. I’m not interested in outlawing abortion, but I think we should remind women that they don’t have to take the easy out.
LOL! That's kind of like saying "according to obama, Bush wanted to commit genocide in Iraq and that God told him to." IOW, that bit of info can be taken with a grain of salt.
I've toured one of these crisis centers and know many people who volunteer their time with it. It's nothing like the above comment. But yeah ... very pro-life.
The book was published in 1993. A few years later a friend and I went to a Lamott book signing in NYC, and watched all the little kids running around the room.
Oh. Well. They are Slimes readers after all...never mind.
I am antiabortion, not just pro-life.
My first hand experience taught me these “clinics” offer little to no actual “help’ to pregnant women.
They fail on the follow through.
Their “mission” is done if a pregnant woman is not actively seeking an abortion.
This is a MAJOR scandal!!! A place that advertises itself as providing "abortion alternatives" is providing alternatives to abortion! This is SO deceptive!
I’m sorry to hear that you had an experience at a “crisis Pregnancy center” that you believe failed on follow through.
Still, it’s a pretty sweeping indictment to assume your negative experience defines the mission and scope of care offered at hundreds of centers across the country. How many clinics have you had first hand experiences with?
The two centers I have been associated with, one in Philadelphia in the mid 1980s and one in Spokane WA for the last 7 years, both provide ongoing supportive services for women who chose to carry their babies to term, from baby clothes and cribs to parenting classes and medical referrals.
Not quite sure what you were trying to get across by your comment that you are “antiabortion, not just pro-life”. That would seem to support, rather than argue against, an agenda that was focused on just helping those who are planning to abort their babies to see other options.
It sounds like you, or someone close to you, had other needs that put mom and/or baby at risk. Again, I am genuinely sorry that it seems like those needs were not in the scope of service of the agency you turned to. I sincerely hope they were able to direct you to another source of assistance.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.