Pro-Life Movement Must Help Pregnancy Centers on Pro-Abortion Attacks

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 16, 2006   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Pro-Life Movement Must Help Pregnancy Centers on Pro-Abortion Attacks Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 16
, 2006

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The president of a Planned Parenthood watchdog group says the pro-life movement needs to do more to protect crisis pregnancy centers from attacks by abortion advocates. Pregnancy centers have come under assault in a campaign by pro-abortion groups and lawmakers in recent years to discredit their work.

Doug Scott, the president of Life Decisions International, which monitors corporate donations to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, made the call for the pro-life community to step up.

Pregnancy centers threaten the profit margin for the abortion industry, which hits Planned Parenthood’s pocketbook. Scott has documented numerous efforts from the abortion business to make pregnancy centers appear disingenuous.

"It is far past the time when we should be educating pro-life advocates about the persecution faced by those who work and volunteer for crisis pregnancy centers," Scott said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained. "Now is the time when we must fight back."

The campaign to discredit pregnancy centers goes back to 1987 when Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation (NAF), a trade group for independent abortion businesses, publicly alleged that pregnancy centers are dangerous "fake abortion clinics."

In a line of argument that continues today, they claimed pregnancy centers are intent on luring unsuspecting and vulnerable women into a web of propaganda, lies and false promises.

Once inside a pregnancy center, women are allegedly abused (verbally and emotionally), threatened, and even physically restrained.

The pro-abortion groups relied on both paid and free media campaigns to tarnish the pro-woman image pregnancy centers had built up and they were able to persuade some pro-abortion lawmakers and law enforcement personnel to go after the centers.

Scott says more recent attacks have relied on so-called "personal accounts" of abortion activists who supposedly experienced the "problems" at pregnancy centers firsthand. He indicated that a careful examination of such "personal accounts" indicates that they are phony.

Meanwhile, pro-abortion Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, has introduced legislation that would require the Federal Trade Commission to apply "truth-in-advertising" standards to pregnancy centers. It could limit their ability to help women or advertise their services.

Scott is worried that, if Democrats win control of Congress after the November elections, "a congressional hearing on the bill is assured. Crisis pregnancy centers, along with their employees and volunteers, will again be publicly vilified."

Also, pro-abortion Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, issued a one-sided report claiming that pregnancy centers give women false information about abstinence and abortion’s risks and dangers, including its link to breast cancer. That attack will continue at a more intense clip if abortion advocates run Congress next year.

Scott said his group is calling on women and men who have had personal experience with a pregnancy center or an abortion facility to go public. He is planning to collect the personal stories about good experiences at pregnancy centers and poor experiences at abortion facilities and will present them to members of Congress.

"This time, pro-life advocates will not stand silently by while the enemies of life attack the good work and good people of CPCs," Scott said.

"The difference between our campaign and that of Planned Parenthood is our insistence that every word submitted be completely true," Scott said. "No exaggerations. No taking events, words or deeds out of context."

He has set March 31, 2007 as a deadline for women to submit their experiences to his group to collect for its campaign.

"We want to put Planned Parenthood on the defensive. We want to tell the truth about the wonderful work done by crisis pregnancy centers," Scott concluded.

"We want to open the eyes of the public to the horror that is Planned Parenthood. And we want to make the Planned Parenthood hierarchy regret the day they first began their campaign of lies against [them]," he said.

Related web sites:
LDI pregnancy center project – https://www.fightpp.org/show.cfm?page=fight