We have all heard the familiar adage: If you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. This is the tactic the abortion industry is using today to attempt to discredit America’s pregnancy centers.
In June of this year the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision upholding the First Amendment rights of pregnancy centers in NIFLA v. Becerra. Since then, abortion industry advocates have accelerated their slanderous claims against pregnancy centers.
As touched on during NIFLA’s last webcast, the Fake Clinic Campaign had its origins in 1982 with Planned Parenthood. Ironically, this campaign is itself based on fake claims that are often repeated in the media without any fact checking whatsoever.
Despite numerous positive pregnancy center client testimonials, the abortion industry continues to propagate the lie that these life-affirming agencies are “fake” clinics engaged in deceiving women. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
The record reveals that there is nothing “fake” about the vital resources provided by America’s pro-life pregnancy centers. The data supporting the good work of these agencies of compassion is overwhelming.
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Statistics from Charlotte Lozier’s 2018 Pregnancy Center Report show:
- There are more than 2,700 pregnancy centers nationwide.
- As one of the largest grassroots movements in America, more than 67,400 volunteers serve at pregnancy centers.
- Pregnancy centers provided 2 million people with free services in 2017, at an estimated community cost savings of at least $161 million annually.
- About two-thirds of these centers are medical facilities staffed with licensed medical professionals providing free medical services.
- More than 7,500 licensed medical professionals (including nurses, doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and registered diagnostic medical sonographers) volunteer and freely give of their time and skills.
- 700,000 free pregnancy tests were given.
- $114 million worth of ultrasounds were performed at no cost to patients.
So why are abortion industry advocates working so hard to vilify pregnancy centers? Money. In 1990 there were approximately 1.6 million abortions nationwide. The latest statistics show that number has decreased to approximately 900,000. At an average cost of $500 per abortion, that adds up to $250,000,000 in lost income to the abortion industry per year.
America’s pregnancy centers are decimating the abortion industry’s bottom line. The vicious “Fake Clinic” propaganda campaign attacking pregnancy centers was designed by the abortion industry to protect their death-driven revenue source.
Women are smart. They deserve to know the full extent of all their options from an agency that does not benefit financially from their decision. And that’s what pregnancy centers do by sharing the truth about the humanity of their unborn children.
The pro-abortion industry does not like this truth to be revealed. When women understand their unborn child is far from a “clump of cells,” but rather a genetically distinct human being, they most often choose life for their babies.
As the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held in the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns v. City of Baltimore case decided earlier this year, “truthful affirmative assertions are not, without more, misleading.”
The Court went on to state: “After seven years of litigation and a 1,295-page record before us, the City does not identify a single example of a woman who entered the Greater Baltimore Center’s waiting room under the misimpression that she could obtain an abortion there. What the record does show is affirmative advocacy of abortion alternatives by a lawful non-profit group.”
This is what pregnancy centers do, and they do it with honesty, integrity and compassion. These life-affirming centers provide women with necessary resources that empower them to choose life — day-in and day-out, without any personal gain, without deception, and without hesitation.
As Executive Director Christine Vatuone of Informed Choices in Gilroy, Calif., put it, “We come alongside women and help them imagine the possibilities of life.”
There is nothing “fake” about that.
LifeNews Note: Anne O’Connor is NIFLA’s vice president of Legal Affairs. This year, she served as co-counsel on NIFLA v. Becerra , a pro-life Supreme Court case resulting in one of the most important First Amendment rulings in a generation.
