NC's crisis pregnancy centers exposed

Submitted by scharrison on Mon, 10/24/2011 - 1:05pm

So much for giving women important information to guide their decisions:

For the past year, NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina has been investigating the state's 122 crisis pregnancy centers. Director Carey Pope says they found that, "Staff and volunteers often use propaganda to dissuade women from abortions." Previous research has found that the centers often lie to women about abortion being linked to breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness.

Which is bad enough, but this stuff is just crazy:

NARAL found found some other disturbing inormation about how women are treated at the pregnancy centers. A Jewish woman who posed as a pregnant woman as part of the investigation was told at five centers that she wouldn't go to heaven unless she converted to Christianity, and one woman told her she should become a "born-again virgin." The facilities were part of the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship, which represents 67 anti-abortion centers in the state.

That whole "Tarheel Taliban" thing is starting to sound less like a joke and more like a solid analogy.

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More findings from the study

Submitted by scharrison on Mon, 10/24/2011 - 8:53pm.

The case for state regulation is even stronger now that CPCs are to receive state funding through the sale of “Choose Life” specialty license
plates. For each license plate sold, a portion of the proceeds goes to the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship (CPCF), a North Carolina non-profit organization that is the state’s official contact for Choose Life, Inc., a
national anti-choice organization, as distributor of those funds to CPCs throughout North Carolina.
Of the 60 CPCs that are a part of the CPCF and will receive state funding:

■ 94% (51 CPCs) have no medical professionals on their staff,
although only 20% (11 CPCs) disclose this to their clients.
■ 30% (16 CPCs) provide ultrasounds; of these, only 3 have any
medical professionals on staff.
■ 26% (14 CPCs) engage in deceptive advertising in phonebooks,
internet sites and college newspapers.
■ 22% (12 CPCs) inaccurately claim abortion causes breast cancer.
■ Over half (56%) of the CPCs claim that abortion usually results
in so-called “Post Abortion Stress.”
■ 59% (32 CPCs) incorrectly exaggerate abortion risks.
■ 39% (21 CPCs) disseminate misleading information regarding
birth control effectiveness.
■ 46% (25 CPCs) promote abstinence over contraception.

You can read the report in its entirety here, and afterwards you can throw a little love at NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina.

While we're on that subject, I just wanted to say: Research like NARAL did for this report can run into the thousands of man/woman hours. Even with volunteers and interns and grants from philanthropic orgs, putting together work like this takes a big bite out of an annual budget.

What would you prefer, fewer reports like this or a bigger budget?