NARAL Pickets Crisis-Pregnancy Center
It's a familiar sight—activists chanting slogans and bearing signs, attempting to speak to pregnant women as they enter a clinic.
But look at the signs. They say "FAKE CLINIC." These protesters aren't protesting that the clinic offers abortions. They're protesting that it
doesn't offer abortions.
Welcome to the looking-glass world of
NARAL Pro-Choice Washington state.
The photos above of pro-abortion demonstrators protesting the
Life Choices crisis-pregnancy center come from the NARAL branch's Web site, which boasts,
"[S]ee how beautiful we looked." It links to
an article on the June 2 protest from the Seattle weekly
The Stranger.
What exactly got these protesters' copious dander up? The
Stranger article quotes a NARAL rep:
"They give evasive answers about their services, they're unwilling to answer if you can make an appointment with a doctor, they delay giving back a [pregnancy test] response," ostensibly to keep women in the clinic, says Blythe Chandler, a NARAL Pro-Choice Washington spokesperson, and adviser to the young protesters, ticking off just a few of the problems she sees with crisis clinics in general.
All right, so those are problems with CPCs in general—what did
this one do to make the pro-death forces call out the ground troops?
The teens had called the clinic, pretending that they'd just tested positive on a home pregnancy test, to hear Life Choices' response. "They were friendly," allows Mei Mei Woo, a Franklin High School student in a white hoodie. But otherwise, the staff members were evasive on the phone. Woo asked about her options, and the clinic's staff, she says, pressured her to make an appointment instead of answering. "They kept saying come down here," says Woo, who originally hooked up with NARAL for a community-service project.
Some high-schoolers choose to
build houses for the homeless for their community-service project. Some choose to be a
Big Brother or Big Sister. Mei Mei Woo chose to protest a clinic whose sole aim is to give people the financial and emotional tools they need to save their children's lives.
The article continues:
Woo's classmate, Emma O'Neill, had a similar experience when she called, pretending to be pregnant. "They said 'we can give you an ultrasound to let you know if your baby is developing normally,'" she said, but they wouldn't discuss abortion. O'Neill suspects the ultrasound offer is an attempt to appeal to a woman's emotions-by introducing "your baby"—to dissuade or delay abortion. (Abortion is legal until 25 weeks in Washington State, but it's hard to find a provider after 12 weeks, and later abortions are more expensive.)
Oh, where to begin? The horror of showing a mother an ultrasound—how dare anyone suggest it is "her baby"! It's not a baby, it's a VENOMOUS PARASITE OUT TO SUCK HER BLOOD, MAKE HER HIDEOUSLY FAT, AND DEPRIVE HER OF HER SOCIAL STANDING!
And note the sly postscript that "later abortions are more expensive." Never mind that part of the mission of CPCs is to give women the financial help they need to bring their children to term—and to enable them to be financially secure should they decide to keep their children rather than put them up for adoption.
The only real criticism NARAL offers of Life Choices is that it "won't discuss abortion." A Life Choices executive admits this in the article:
Life Choices CEO Corey Kahler says their clinics aren't deceptive or "in your face," as the protesters allege (a "textbook" claim against crisis clinics, he says). True, "we don't perform or refer for abortion," he says, but they do say it's an option. Instead, Life Choices provides "a service to the community when it comes to pregnancy issues," referring women to resources that empower "life affirming decisions."
The real issue here is not that Life Choices—whose
Web site does not list abortion among their services—will not discuss abortion over the phone. The real issue is that NARAL's partner in crime Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, will not discuss
adoption over the phone. Try calling a Planned Parenthood branch to discuss adoption and see what happens. I guarantee you that they'll ask to see you so that you may come to one of their clinics and answer the questionaire in their brochure
What If I'm Pregnant? Here are a couple of sample statements to which a woman is supposed to answer True or False:
I'm choosing adoption because abortion scares me.
The child's father will approve of adoption.
If you answer that first question "True," your choice is ill-informed in Planned Parenthood's eyes, because they believe fear of abortion alone is not a good enough reason for adoption. Never mind that there are
plenty of mental-health reasons alone why one should fear having an abortion, as the women of
Silent No More could easily tell you.
As for the caveat that a woman seeking the adoption route should consult the child's father—hmmm, the "What If I'm Pregnant" abortion questionnaire contains no corresponding question. Apparently the father only deserves a say if the woman's considering letting her child live—not if she's considering killing it.
Planned Parenthood claims to offer women all possible options—yet its adoption rate is so dismal that an unborn child whose mother enters one of the organization's clinics has only a
1 in 138 chance of survival. By contrast, CPCs that show clients their ultrasounds report a
90 percent success rate in convincing the women to keep their children. (The rate is 70 percent for CPCs that don't show clients ultrasounds—proving that a woman, when supplied with images of her unborn child, is highly likely to change her mind in favor of life. For some reason, this doesn't figure into Planned Parenthood's professed view that women should make informed choices.)
No wonder the NARAL crowd is so worked up. CPCs are saving lives at a truly alarming rate. Human beings are surviving, and they're growing up—
to vote NARAL's political backers out of office.
* * *If you'd like to show Life Choices your support, you can donate online.
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