Top Democrats in New Jersey want to stop pregnant women from seeking help for themselves and their babies at pregnancy resource centers.
At the state and federal level, New Jersey lawmakers recently introduced legislation to thwart their life-saving work based on unfounded claims of false advertising.
Politico published a very biased report this week about the effort, claiming Gov. Phil Murphy and New Jersey lawmakers are just trying to create a “safe haven for women” – when really they are pressuring women to have abortions.
The news outlet relied heavily on abortion activists’ claims and even described the abortion pill reversal treatment as “fake science,” ignoring how more than 4,500 unborn babies’ lives have been saved.
Marie Tasy, director of New Jersey Right to Life, dismissed the claims as nonsense, telling Politico: “I don’t believe [pro-life pregnancy centers] have in any way deceived people. This is unfortunately a very biased agenda by this administration that is doing the bidding of the abortion industry.”
The growing attacks on pregnancy centers are based on the assumptions that pregnant women always are sure they want abortions and the billion-dollar abortion industry never deceives or pressures its patients, that pro-lifers are wrong about science, and that encouraging a pregnant mother to choose life for her unborn baby is unethical.
ACTION ALERT: To oppose this radical pro-abortion agenda, Contact New Jersey state lawmakers.
Reports rarely, if ever, point to complaints from actual clients of pregnancy centers, and the reason is because women overwhelmingly share positive experiences. In a recent column at the New Jersey Star-Ledger, for example, Courtney Garaguso described how Choices of the Heart in New Jersey helped her reconsider abortion when she was 19 and pregnant with her second child.
Eight years later, “I work with women in the same situation at the very center that lifted me out of my despair: Choices of the Heart,” she said. “As a financial advisor in client services, I am honored to walk hand in hand with mothers in need, calming the same fear and uncertainty in these women’s hearts that I once felt myself.”
Anne O’Connor, vice president of legal affairs at the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, told Politico that pregnancy resource centers exist to help pregnant and parenting families choose life for their babies. Most offer free ultrasounds, pregnancy and STI tests, diapers, formula, parenting classes, cribs and more.
One bill, Assembly Bill 2145, attempts to crack down on these resources for moms in need. Introduced by state Assemblymember Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, D-Mercer, the bill would punish pro-life pregnancy centers for supposedly “deceptive” or “misleading” advertising under the state consumer fraud act, according to the report. It would give the state attorney general’s office the power to determine what it believes is deception or misinformation.
Reynolds-Jackson did not explain what possible motivation pro-lifers could have for “deceiving” women to convince them to keep their unborn babies, or offering free diapers and cribs.
But she did claim that doing so is a “threat to both mom and baby.”
“Women deserve accurate and unbiased information, and that’s not what these organizations provide,” Reynolds-Jackson told the news outlet. “It’s misleading and it’s a threat to both mom and baby. Their advertising tactics are meant to prey on people seeking abortions. It’s all to influence this decision that a woman has the right to make on her own.”
The implication is that killing unborn babies is a good thing – better than supporting a mom so that she and her child can live and thrive.
Reynolds-Jackson’s bill has languished in committee, suggesting the public does not share her views. However, U.S. Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, both New Jersey Democrats, recently introduced a similar bill at the federal level to give the Federal Trade Commission authority to punish pregnancy centers for supposedly “deceptive or misleading” advertising nation-wide, according to the report.
New Jersey leaders have been disparaging the work of pregnancy centers in other ways, too. In December, state Attorney General Matthew Platkin published a consumer alert warning women not to visit them.
“Crisis Pregnancy Centers try to convince pregnant people not to have abortions,” Platkin said in the alert. “CPCs may appear to be reproductive health care clinics, but they do not provide abortion care or provide referrals for abortion care, contraception, or other reproductive health care.”
Here’s more from the report:
The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, an anti-abortion organization that oversees 1,700 pregnancy centers nationally, said the consumer alert is inaccurate and unfairly tarnishes the reputations of these centers.
“We think there’s definitely a misunderstanding on what pregnancy centers do,” O’Connor of the NIFLA said. “They don’t seem to have any factual basis for the consumer alert.”
A consortium of pregnancy centers overseen by NIFLA filed an open public records request following the release of the consumer alert seeking documents that supported the alert’s claims. The request was denied on the grounds that it was overbroad.
The consortium is now suing the state for access to these documents.
Pregnancy centers are under attack for one reason. They cut into the billion-dollar abortion industry’s profits and expose its lies.
These pro-life charities exist simply to support families and save lives from abortion. Their mission is simple and straightforward. They tell the truth and provide information that abortion facilities often don’t, such as facts about an unborn baby’s development and abortion risks.
They serve hundreds of thousands of families every year across the U.S., providing material, financial, emotional and spiritual support – all for free. Most function solely on private donations, too.
According to an analysis by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, pregnancy resource centers have helped save more than 800,000 unborn babies from abortion since 2016. The research found the charity organizations served about 2 million people in 2019 alone, 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.
ACTION ALERT: To oppose this radical pro-abortion agenda, Contact New Jersey state lawmakers.
