Massachusetts pro-life leaders demanded justice Monday from pro-abortion Attorney General Maura Healey as vandalisms, threats and false accusations continue to be lobbed at pregnancy resource centers that serve mothers and babies.
In a letter to Healey, First Liberty Institute and the Massachusetts Family Institute asked the Democrat leader why she has not protected pro-life organizations from the on-going attacks, as is her duty.
Instead, they said Healey has participated in the hostility by threatening pregnancy centers with sanctions for providing life-saving information to mothers in need.
“No one should suffer violence for simply providing counseling and desperately needed baby supplies to women and their babies,” said Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, in a statement. “The attorney general’s singling out of pregnancy resource centers exhibits a hostility toward faith-based pregnancy centers that should be repugnant to everyone.”
In July, Healey, a pro-abortion Democrat, accused pro-life pregnancy centers of lying to women and threatened sanctions against them. Among her accusations were that pregnancy centers provide information to women about the abortion pill reversal procedure, a safe and effective treatment that has saved thousands of babies’ lives.
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Other Massachusetts politicians also have attacked the services that pro-life organizations provide. In July, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren demanded that pregnancy centers be “shut down” across the country because they supposedly “torture” women.
The hostile rhetoric has come alongside numerous reports of arson, vandalism, threats and harassment targeting pregnancy centers in Massachusetts and across the country. Several have been firebombed and dozens more have been vandalized in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
One the same day as Healey’s announcement, the radical pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge vandalized the Clearway Clinic, a pro-life pregnancy center in Worcester, smashing windows and spray-painting graffiti.
But “rather than protect these faith-based organizations providing professional reproductive health services, as is [her] duty,” Healey is placing them at further risk, the pro-life organizations said.
They accused the state attorney general of discriminating against pro-life organizations because she disagrees with them politically and urged her to withdraw her letter and “consumer advisory” threatening sanctions against them.
“It is outrageous that the attorney general would target pregnancy centers that offer essential medical services, counseling, along with diapers and knitted baby blankets to women in crisis while allowing dangerous vandals to go free,” said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute. “Gen. Healey has a legal obligation to protect all reproductive health facilities, not just the ones she politically favors.”
Dys’s organization asked Healey to explain what her office has done to protect pro-life organizations from political violence and investigate the crimes that already have occurred.
“Please respond with detailed actions taken by your office—or that your office intends to take—to protect the citizens of your state who work and volunteer at these [pregnancy resource centers] to love, counsel, feed and clothe mothers and their babies …” its letter states.
Massachusetts pregnancy center directors also defended their work in an interview with the Boston Globe this week, saying Healey’s accusations are not true.
“We give out diapers! We give out clothes!” said Teresa Larkin, executive director of Your Options Medical in Revere. “We’re just trying to help women find support and help and resources. And we’re going to get criticized for that?”
Kelly Wilcox, executive director of Clearway Clinics, said Healey accused them of providing “inaccurate and misleading information about abortion,” misleading women “about how far they are into their pregnancy” and not having licensed medical personnel – none of which is true.
It would be “unconscionable for us to lie about medical information,” Wilcox told the newspaper. “We are licensed doctors, licensed nurses who are practicing under all standards of medical ethics.”
Pro-life advocates run about 3,000 pregnancy resource centers across the United States.
According to an analysis by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, these organizations have helped save more than 800,000 unborn babies from abortion since 2016. The research found pregnancy resource centers served about 2 million people in 2019, providing more than 730,000 pregnancy tests, nearly half a million ultrasounds, 1.3 million packs of diapers and more than 2 million baby outfits, all for free. Most offer post-abortion counseling and other services as well.
