Given that there was a post last week about misinformation given out by CPCs in various areas, what follows is something I wrote about a year and a half ago, when, after attending an Feminist Majority Foundation conference, I decided to find out more about CPCs by going into one of their clinics, pretending to have gotten a girl pregnant, and asking for information.
The writing is rather sloppy and contains little feminist theory, but I wanted to share anyhow. Also, if you've utilized the services of CPCs and would like to share, please let me know. From here on is the piece from a year and a half ago.
Marc
For those who may not know, Crisis Pregnancy Centers are popping up everywhere. Disguised as health centers, these CPCs are run and supported by anti-choice, religious right people who are there to influence a woman's decision to have abortions. They are neither health professional nor are they looking out for the best interests of women.
I've known about these for quite a while, but never realized the extend of it all until this weekend at the conference.
So on Monday, armed with the new information, I went into one of those (never realized it was so close to campus, either), to get some information.
It started with a phone call - me pretending to be a college senior who got a freshman pregnant and needed help. They told me to come in and talk. ( I should win an Oscar for such good acting, by the way. I didn't wear my "I Heart Pro-Choice Girls" shirt, and I drank two Red Bulls to ensure I look like I was shaking out of nervousness.)
Sitting there in one of their private rooms, I noticed - firstly, that there are little models of fetuses, starting at about two weeks, all the way up to the time of birth.
"Neat, aren't they?" the lady asked me. "You know, from the time of about two weeks, the heart is beating." (Yeah, life begins at conception and ends at birth, huh?)
I knew where this was going, so I shut up and pretended to play the part of an ignorant college boy who was in distress.
"How much time do we have to make a decision?" I asked her, adding that the girl I'd gotten pregnant was in distress and I just needed information to "hold her over," until she was ready to come in.
"In reality, you have up until the day before birth if you want to have an abortion," she said. "Sick as it is, the baby is partially given birth to and then its brain collapsed." (You want to fucking tell me the truth? The longer the pregnancy gets drawn out, the harder it is to legally get an abortion. For someone to claim to be so pro-life, it's nice to see you're putting women's lives at risk for late-term abortions.)
She went on to describe the cruelsome procedure of a so-called partial-birth abortion, and how it's the killing of a life.
"Health risks, what are they?" I asked, wanting to see where she'd go with this.
"Well, there are always risks to abortions, and unfortunately, we don't have the numbers because abortion is such a lucrative industry, so the numbers aren't given out to us." (Uh - really lucrative, right? Tell that to guys like Dr. George Tiller, who have been hurt, his clinics burned down just to save women's lives).
She went on to explain that the risks of abortion are plentiful, to include deaths, in that abortions are sometimes performed by those who aren't doctors (pot calling the kettle black?), and that even the "abortion pill" might be harmful because it leaves the fetus inside sometimes. (If she gives so much of a damn about women's lives, why doesn't she support the choice movement, to ensure that every abortion is a safe one, as to save women's lives?)
"They say that after taking the pill, there might be some discharge. In reality, it's the baby," she said.
"But there are also emotional factors involved. I've seen guys like you who are just starting out in their careers, and when they do settle down and have a family and having their baby, they'd hold that baby and wonder what if they had kept the other one," she said.
"Women are affected, too. When you have an abortion, they put you under twighlight sleep, so you don't remember it, but sometimes, years later, just doing something like vaccuming might trigger the memory," she added. (Yeah, because women are supposed to be at home vacuuming, right?)
She then added that she'd like for me to bring in the supposedly pregnant girl to have an ultrasound done. "Some women want to look at the baby before they go through the process, I don't know why," she said. (No, YOU want the women to look at this thing so that you can convince them out of an abortion, no matter how much in affects their lives.)
Another risk for abortions, she said, is that sometimes, the abortion is "incomplete," thus women will suffer from complications. Even if they are rushed to the hospital, they won't likely tell the doctors about the abortion, out of embarrassment, and might die as a result.
I couldn't help it. I just had to ask.
"Now, if I had something of a surgery, I would tell a doctor. Why wouldn't a woman tell a doctor about an abortion?"
"Because deep down inside, she knows it's the killing of a baby, and doesn't want to admit that fact," she said. "No one wants the stigma of having killed your child." (THEN DON'T FUCKING PUT SUCH STIGMAS ON WOMEN! JESUS CHRIST! IS IT SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?)
Random great quote from here: "Birth control isn't always reliable. They're chemicals, and will affect the body dramatically, because if you look at it, humans are made to create families. When you put something in your body to go against that, there will be complications."
The hardest part was knowing, as she told me, that I am not the only one being deceived.
"There are lots of guys in your situation who come here. Guys just starting out their careers or in the Navy, and we're helping them as much as possible."
Does this not disturb you, that military personnel and college students are being led down the inappropriate path by these people? At least with us pro-choicers, we give people real information and choices, not zealous ideologies dressed up as concerns for women.
In all, the conversation lasted about half an hour, I got some pamphlets and left. Next step? Interview with Planned Parenthood tomorrow, throwing an article together and getting it out there.
If anyone has utilized their services, let me know. I'd like to include you in the article.
Bottom line is these people are not looking out for the best interests of women. If you put your personal ideologies over the lives of women, you are not pro-life. You are pro-yourself. It's sick, it's selfish and you suck.
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All I can say is the best of luck with your article, you are a wonderful person, and it sucks that you had to put yourself through that garbage but it will all pay off someday...
Thank you thank you thank you!
Men like you make me have hope.
We're all in this together, especially with such a situation. I am so glad you did this, maybe it will draw other young men into the fold, to clear up all the misconceptions and outright lies these places swill. It takes both parties to make one, it takes both parties to deal with the outcome, Bless you darling!
Ditto. Marc, I always really enjoy your posts and appreciate your voice here.
I haven't been to any CPCs (isn't that some kind of chemical or something?), but someone to be so uneducated at their job as to make the claim of health risks and then have NO information (not even vague information) to give.
I mean, seriously? There's plenty of information out there. I am pretty sure that most places would not hire such ignorant and idealist people to work there. Or maybe she is a volunteer, which could explain it.
But that's the thing about Crisis Pregnancy Centers. They're not really there to give accurate information about abortions. They're there to encourage women to have children. They represent and market themselves as having medical expertise and understanding, but they don't. They don't have to because they don't actually do any medical procedures besides read pee-sticks.
Their job is to bring as many pregnancies to term as possible, even if it means lying or misrepresenting medical information. They ONLY hire idealist people willing to fudge the truth, or else there's no reason for them to be around.
Hm...
Being from a very conservative and pro-life background, I have seen similar things to what is presented here-- emotional stories of women who went to abortion centers (typically Planned Parenthood-type places, not clinics that provided only abortions) and were fumed at when told they wanted support for keeping their baby or where they didn't tell the women anything about health risks for abortions (especially the surgical abortions; as I said before, ALL surgeries carry health risks), and etc.
Not too long ago I heard a story about a pro-life woman who posed as an underage girl seeking an abortion (in a state which forbade that w/o parental consent, if I remember correctly), and had the PP clinic help her despite the state laws.
Are the pro-life stories true? Are the pro-choice stories true? I am not going to believe one other the other simply because I agree. I do not know why so many people here expect people to believe one side's experiences and not the others; subjective experience is subjective.
And yeah, if I was into the pro-life movement (its too stereotyped for me), I could probably look up some legitimate statistics from legitimate doctors/scientists supporting pro-life arguments; there are health risks with abortions and abortifacients, as with everything. But since I am not into it, I have no information at my disposal; and although Google is my friend, they aren't infallible or anywhere near that.
Unless that clinic lied and coerced that girl into having an abortion, it's nowhere near the same as lying and coercing women into giving birth. I think common sense probably tells you that it's highly unlikely a health care provider would not tell someone the risks of a medical procedure. I know pro-lifers want to believe that ob-gyns are just desperate to perform abortions by any means necessary, but the fact is, doctors care about malpractice lawsuits. That's why you have to sign multiple pages acknowledging that you've been informed of and accept the risks of a procedure, for everything from oral surgery to laser hair removal. But maybe the prolifers felt the risks weren't being detailed properly because there was no "you'll regret killing your baby and be depressed forever, then get cancer and die" disclaimer; these are after all the same people who think a woman should be forced to view an ultrasound before she can decide to obtain an abortion.
Also, there's a big difference between "risks" that can happen as a direct result of an invasive medical procedure and "it gives you cancer!" There are health risks that exist, but not the type or to the degree that CPCs claim. This is not some new experimental procedure whose effects are still up for debate in the medical community. When multiple medical journals, professional health care organizations, oncology centers, etc agree on something, it's probably because it's been scientifically reviewed and determined. All opinions are not equal here; there is a standard of objective fact.
What the pro-liars never explain is -- even if it had been a real case -- what the clinic's telephone operator should have said. "You're thirteen years old, you say? And your boyfriend is twenty-two? Okay, sweetie, you come right on down here -- you've got our address? Good. As soon as you're here we'll telephone your parents, and then call the police and have a warrant out for your boyfr -- hello? Hello?"
Theres health risks with pregnancy too.
CPCs lie. For proof, go to the following website. They claim that abortion causes infertility, breast cancer and emotional consequences. The APA, however, found that abortion does not increase the risk of mental illness. The breast cancer and infertility link has also been disproved.
http://www.choicesaz.org/pregnancy/abortion_info/
The job of employees at a crisis pregnancy center IS to make scare-tactic claims with no information to back them up. They're lying, so the information doesn't exist. Most CPCs are owned and operated by religious organizations, not doctors, and you don't have to be a doctor to give ultrasounds and hand out those pee-on-a-stick pregnancy tests, so most of the workers aren't medical professionals, either. Marc's worker might have been a volunteer, but she was a volunteer who was doing exactly what she was trained to do.
CPC Watch has stories from women who have visited CPCs, as well as an overview of the kind of misinformation CPCs spread and the tricks they use. Here are two real winners:
"I peed on a store-bought pregnancy test and was led into a room for counseling. I stated bluntly that I didn't want to have a baby because I was in college, wasn't in a relationship, and honestly never wanted kids. The woman immediately shifted gears and laid into me, calling me selfish, saying I was irresponsible for having sex outside of marriage, and that I was lying to myself about not wanting kids because as a woman it was my destiny. She said if I "killed my baby," I'd never be able to fulfill that destiny and would be depressed forever. I was so confused because I still thought this was a medical facility that counseled people. But before I could ask any questions, a woman entered and said I wasn't pregnant. I told her I was pretty sure I was because I'd been to my college health center and they had given me a "real lab test". The woman said they "ran the test several times" (which seems impossible considering it was just an EPT test) and that the test at the health center was probably a false positive. While I should have been more inquisitive, I was just happy to receive the news that I was not pregnant. About a month passed and I still didn't have a period. I was gaining weight and my breasts were tender. I went back to the health center and they referred me to a local ob/gyn who did an ultrasound and told me I was about 15 weeks pregnant!!! I was so angry. The doctor told me that I'd visited a "CPC" and that they often lie to women to delay their decision making, possibly until it's too late for an abortion."
"They said I was 12 weeks along. They said I was too far along to have a legal abortion in my state. I knew this was wrong and realized I wasn’t in the right place. I screamed at the staff and left in a huff, saying I was going to have an abortion somewhere else. Whoops. I didn’t mean to do that, it was definitely a mistake. But I was so angry that they were lying! A few days later, my mom got an anonymous phone call that said I’d killed her grandbaby. I was infuriated and humiliated. Fortunately my mom was understanding and said she would have done the same thing but wishes I had talked to her first because she knew of a good clinic and I wouldn’t have ended up in this terrible place. I felt so happy and relieved. Seven months later, I got a card in the mail. It said, “Congratulations on Your New Baby!" but it was splattered with red paint or ink. Every year after that, I’d get a Happy Birthday card made for children, except they’re all splattered with red paint."
Are you kidding me? The information DOES exist- an abortion is an operation or a medication, and- like any operation or medication- has risks. Of course abortions carry risks! So does taking calcium pills, having a quadruple bypass, or just about everything. Seriously?
And really, giving out "experiences" of some of those who had visited and didn't like CPCs doesn't really prove anything about the centers as a whole, and especially about pro-life"ness" or whatever.
CPC's often use scare tactics and either flat out lie about risks (abortions cause breast cancer) or falsely inflate the risks of abortion (without providing any relevant information or citation for those elevated claims).
Crisis Pregnancy Centers are there to counsel (strong-arm) women into having children. If it's what women want to do, great. The problem is that they start lying and misrepresenting information (see OP) if women say they'd rather have information about obtaining abortions.
I think hearing from women who have had bad experiences (why did you use scare quotes?) with CPC's are just as valid as reading about customers who have had bad experiences with any number of establishments.
I used quotes because I know neither how accurate they are, nor is it my business. And one should pay equal attention to experiences about pro-life clinics as pro-choice ones- which I believe is zero (unless you speak of a particular one and the experiences are documented hopefully).
And yes, some employees of some (most of most? I don't know) CPCs are there to pressure women into decisions they don't want and give insufficient/false information, I would say. And probably many employees of pro-choice centers are also unscrupulous (alot of people are, whatever affiliation) and pressure women into decisions they don't want either and also give out insufficient/false information.
ALL of them lie and distort. Its exactly WHY they exist. You wont be able to find a cpc website that doesnt lie or distort information. You could be assured that their staffs wont be legit either.
How is it not any of your business how accurate these stories are? They are your business unless you think it doesn't matter if it's true that women are lied to and coerced into giving birth.
...which answers my question.
It doesn't matter because the other side has an equal amount of horror stories. Maybe they are lying, fine. And maybe they aren't. Maybe these stories are true, and those made up. Do I know? No. Is there a way I can know? No. I can't assign any weight to them unless I know.
Really. So all of the documented evidence about CPC practices is of no help to you in determining if women's stories that reflect those same documented practices are true. And the fact that pro-life lies about abortion can be scientifically debunked is of no help to you. And the fact that there's no documented evidence of all these mysterious ob-gyns coercing women into abortions - despite the fact that if these claims were true, it's fraud and malpractice and the doctors would be subject to (easily verifiable) legal and professional censure - is of no help to you in determining the veracity of claims that physicians regularly lie, commit malpractice, and force women into abortions. Hmm.
If you go up to see what I am talking about- responding to ElleStar's post- I am talking about personal accounts, one's experiences. And yes, I put absolutely no value into those. Maybe if I knew you well, your experience would be of use to me if I trusted you to learn about what you spoke of, and definitely to learn about you- but random experiences of people I do not know intimately is really no use to me.
And if you read what I wrote, I do not put any great faith into either side's horror stories, none of them at all. I believe what I believe because of what I believe is logical.
Sigh. And if you read what I wrote, you would have read that those "horror stories" are SUBSTANTIATED by DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE. Therefore I'm not sure where the "logic" is in insisting that there's noooooo way anyone can know if they're true. Logic says that if multiple legitimate reports document that CPCs dispense medically inaccurate literature and misinformation like "abortion will give you breast cancer," and then some random person says that they went to a CPC and the staffer gave them inaccurate literature and told them abortion would give them breast cancer, huh, the odds of that anecdote being true are fairly good. Ditto for the other way around - if people are claiming doctors are performing forced abortions and there's no actual evidence of women being forced into abortions, those stories are probably not true. But you are not going to be able to use "logic" in this regard unless you actually bother with the facts.
They even lie about pregnancy. My old local CPC (I moved) said that women are too hormonal to make decisions while pregnant. I had to do an article for a college paper and chose the subject of reproductive rights. I talked to the director herself about that comment along with one of her cronies and she said that it was true. I was disgusted. Theyre so ignorantly transparent.
Um, seriously. Maybe you should educate yourself about the kind of "information" they're giving out if you don't know what I'm referring to. They don't say, "Oh, it's a medical procedure and carries these risks," they tell women that abortion will give them breast cancer, make them depressed, make them infertile, and ruin their lives. None of which are true, so no, they DON'T have the facts to support that. Or that vacuuming will trigger post-traumatic abortion stress or anything else of that nature. They also show medically inaccurate videos (such as animated, sensationalized depictions of abortion) and hand out other literature with trumped-up "facts". And they claim contraception is harmful to your health and increases your STD risk and a host of other stupid lies.
That's two experiences, there are plenty more. And there's plenty of information about CPCs "as a whole" out there, some of which I linked to. This 2006 report on False and Misleading Health Information provided by CPCs found that 87% of CPCs make false health claims that can easily be refuted by current medical data.
Yeah there are risks, but there are risks with pregnancies too. Infact you're more likely to die from childbirth than from a botched abortion.
shit like that is why ive always used the wrong name/phone number/address when ive gone in for free tests.
and im telling you. dont get fooled by the "free tests." brand name and generic home pregnancy tests are expensive. go to the dollar store. they are the exact same ones used at CPCs. they are usually right up front by the registers. even if money is tight, i think anybody could scrounge up the buck and change for the extra dignity.
No, the workers at "pro-choice" centers are doctors and actually have a professional code of conduct, which they can lose their license to practice for not upholding. There aren't any pro-choice equivalents to CPCs where a bunch of unqualified laypeople force women to have abortions against their will - because pro-choice doesn't MEAN pro-making-women-have-abortions, it means giving women a choice. Pro-choicers have no reason to lie to women about pregnancy or abortion (and I'm not sure why you seem to think anyone would have any stock in convincing a woman to have an abortion, even if they were "unscrupulous" - they get nothing out of it). Pro-lifers do, because they want to force the woman to one specific outcome.
And "documented" information on CPCs is linked below, a report for Congress. I have yet to see any reputable health institute or government report on how Planned Parenthood or any other women's health clinic has been found to present consistent and intentional misinformation. It's interesting that you claim you won't believe women's stories about their experiences because they're not proven accurate enough for you, then go on to state that you're sure that pro-choicers behave in such and such a way, just because you're sure they are, even though you admit to having no experience or education on the topic, and aren't "into" the movement enough to do research.
This was supposed to reply to nobody's response to ElleStar, above.
This post communicates, to me, more about the pro-choice attitude toward CPCs than it does about the CPCs themselves. If you look at the actual statements made by the woman quoted, nothing she says is inaccurate, except perhaps the point about the ability to have an abortion up until the day before birth (while this is theoretically true, it would be near-impossible to find a practitioner who would perform such an abortion on a healthy fetus - I suspect even Tiller would not have done so). It's the author's own asides, in parentheses, that appear distorted and extremist. It's particularly disappointing to see the "life ends at birth" trope surface yet again - pro-choicers need to abandon these kind of patently straw-man claims if they ever hope to be taken seriously by anyone who doesn't share their views.
Nothing she says is inaccurate? Really?
For starters, twilight sleep is definitely not used during an abortion. It is a drug that induces amnesia, that was used decades ago during childbirth, but was abandoned by the medical profession.
Secondly, vacuuming cannot cause you to magically recall an abortion procedure. See above: the doctors don't induce amnesia during an abortion.
Thirdly, one can obtain accurate statistics about the risks of abortion procedures.
Fourthly, birth control does not by necessity always lead to complications and dramatic side effects.
Fifthly, as you said, it is most definitely not a reality that you can get an abortion up until the day before labor.
Sixthly, abortion is not a lucrative industry by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm sure there are other inaccurate statements that I missed.
The woman repeatedly stated as facts things that are merely opinions or judgments (i.e. "deep down inside she knows it's the killing of a baby,"). She also relied on manipulative tactics rather than honest information to scare the listener out of getting an abortion(i.e. talking about partial birth abortions in gruesome detail when this is not the procedure that his ficitional girlfriend would be getting).
"Sixthly, abortion is not a lucrative industry by any stretch of the imagination."
I remember reading somewhere that PP's only got 1% of its budget from abortions.
some clinics offer partial sedation - you arent knocked out completely, but it's also stronger than nitrous. it is often referred to as twilight sedation even though it isnt the crazy shit they were doing 50 years ago for labouring women.
personally, i highly recommend finding a place that offers nitrous. it's much cheaper than IV sedation and because they affects wear off more quickly, you dont need someone to drive you home. you are still aware of what's going on, and it still hurts, but you dont really care so much.
I once ended up (started out?) at a better-known CPC in High School. It was a nightmare. My friends and I didn't know any different and wanted someone besides our parents to confirm or deny a pregnancy. We were shown clay fetus figures and feet and booties and all the other things mentioned. We (I) never asked about abortion so it really wasn't mentioned. The nightmare began when I thought the woman at the CPC looked familiar. Turns out, she grew up in my small community. When I didn't come back for my "follow-up" appointment I had several folks in town trying to call me because of her and her "confidentiality". I ended my journey at Planned Parenthood where I got good medical information, thankfully because of my mother. Regardless of whatever info CPC's give, I will never, never support them. It just makes me sad for all the women who are looking for support and valid information and end up at one of these storefront guilt factories.
What a nightmare!
I had friends that got caught up in CPC's too. Unfortunetly I didnt meet them until after my journalism article for a university class on repro rights and issues. They wouldve made a great addition!
Oy, vey! I had a nasty little experience with a CPC about a year ago. It was awful! You can read about it here:
http://community.feministing.com/2008/11/update-and-a-first-hand-accoun.html