YWCA Misinforms Raped Inmate About Adoption, Pays for Coerced Abortion

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 5, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

YWCA Misinforms Raped Inmate About Adoption, Pays for Coerced Abortion

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 5
, 2009

Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — The case of a raped inmate in Kansas who was coerced into an abortion and taken to a Planned Parenthood center is generating criticism of Kansas corrections officials. But it is also implicating the YWCA, which appears to have misled the woman and arranged her abortion.

As LifeNews.com reported, a Topeka newspaper has featured an expose’ today focusing on Tracy Keith.

She is a 30-year-old inmate who got involved in a racketeering scheme with a corrections official that eventually led to her rape at the hand of a prison instructor, Ted Gallardo.

According to the Topeka Capital Journal, YWCA domestic abuse advocates misinformed her about open adoption law in Kansas. Instead, they purchased the abortion and accompanied her to the Planned Parenthood for it.

"The abortion was paid for by a group of committed women in this community," said Sherry Baer, who works for the Battered Women Task Force, claimed. "There were no resources to help this woman in her terrible plight, so some of us put in our chips for that."

The YWCA told Keith that, with two years left on her sentence, and no solid family support network on the outside, the state would sever her parental rights if the baby was born.

A Topeka woman who learned of Keith’s pregnancy made inquiries about adopting the child, but Keith said she wasn’t informed.

Kansans for Life legislative director Kathy Ostrowski told LifeNews.com, "When she discovered she was pregnant, Keith’s reaction was to have the child but was told she was ineligible for an open adoption by a social worker working with the YWCA Battered Women’s Task Force."

"Keith wasn’t informed a Topeka woman made inquiries about adopting her child," she continued.

Keith now says she regrets the abortion and Ostrowski blames the YWCA for encouraging it.

"The ultimate blow was coercion to abort her unborn child by so-called women’s advocates, who misled her about Kansas open adoption policy, even when there was a willing adoptive family," she said. "Such advocates sealed Keith’s misery by paying for an abortion that she cannot forget."

"Women who have been raped are often coerced into abortion—seemingly for their own good," the pro-life advocate continued.

"However, such women have described undergoing the abortion as a type of second ‘rape,’ and an act of violence against an innocent child that they regret permitting. How much more miserable are women without the liberty to leave prison, whose sexual rights are stolen and then lose their maternal rights, through coerced abortion?

Ostrowski said studies show as many as 62 percent of women face pressure when it come to having an abortion and the YWCA made it so, "The day she was taken for the abortion, Keith was not making a free decision."

Ostrowski also condemned the YWCA for saying, their interview with the Topeka newspaper, that “there were no resources” for Keith’s “plight," so they had to buy her an abortion.

"There are 76 crisis pregnancy centers in Kansas that provide free support services for such women," she said.

"It has been accepted for too long that pregnant women facing tough challenges –poverty, battery, substance abuse, disabilities, and prison —should welcome abortions. However, abortion is an act of desperation producing no positive health benefits, while consistently linked with increased suicide, substance abuse and long-term depression," she concludes.

The YWCA has long been a pro-abortion organization and shifting in that direction after shedding its previously Christian basis for existing.

Dr. Lorraine Cole, the CEO of the YWCA, said last year that "the YWCA has always been pro-choice."

ACTION: Contact the YWCA Battered Women Task Force in Topeka at 225 SW 12th St. Topeka, KS 66612-1345, (785) 354-7927. Check this web site for online contact information.

Contact the YWCA with your complaints about its pro-abortion position at YWCA, 1015 18th Street, NW, Suite 1100 – Washington, DC 20036, call 202-467-0801, fax 202-467-0802, or email [email protected]

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