California Program to Help Women Find Abortion Alternatives Canceled
By Liz Townsend

Bowing to pro-abortion pressure, a California health maintenance organization (HMO) abruptly canceled a well-received program in late January that referred pregnant women unsure about carrying their babies to term to a pregnancy help center. Almost 90 babies are alive today as a result of the innovative program.

"Although it is unfortunate that this program ended," Brian Johnston, NRLC Western director, told NRL News, "it's a novel approach that many more pro-life counseling agencies could try to emulate."

The center, First Resort of Oakland, and Kaiser-Oakland Hospital, owned by the Kaiser Permanente HMO, began the program in early 1998. During that time, 147 women who told their doctors they were unsure about continuing their pregnancies were sent to First Resort to receive counseling. About 60% of these women chose to give their babies life.

All the women who were referred to First Resort filled out an evaluation form asking if they felt they were unfairly pressured not to have an abortion. Only one woman said yes, First Resort founder Shari Plunkett told the San Francisco Chronicle.

"I would defy anybody who works on an issue as controversial as this one to come in with numbers this great," Plunkett said.

However, when an article about First Resort that mentioned the program appeared in the Washington Times January 8 (after being published first in the magazine Christianity Today), California pro-abortion groups denounced the program. In the article, Plunkett described the program and said, "All we're doing is spending time with [the women] at the point of their decision, and our hope is that ultimately they will make a decision to carry to term."

Plunkett also said she believes "every woman's heart is telling her to carry to term, because God has placed truth in her heart, and the truth is that abortion is never the right answer."

Such quotes incensed pro-abortion groups. Accusing First Resort of being a "stealth clinic," which a California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League press release defined as centers that "misled women by their dishonest, misleading, and devious advertising and promotional materials," pro-abortion groups pressured Kaiser to cancel the program.

Kaiser spokeswoman Kim Nguyen told the Washington Times, "I don't think we would send members back there because of the viewpoints they have shared."

In early February, a First Resort spokeswoman told NRL News that Kaiser had officially canceled the program.

Plunkett strongly denied that the center misleads women. "What's stealth about having our Yellow Page ad say we don't perform abortions?" she told the Washington Times. "What's stealth about having a written telephone protocol which states, when asked 'Do you do abortions,' we say, 'no, but these are the services we can provide for you'?"

At the center, counselors speak to each woman "about the circumstances in her life, what pressures cause her to be contemplating abortion, who in her life is heading her in that direction, and who is supportive of carrying to term," Plunkett said in the Christianity Today article. "We ask her, apart from these circumstances, what does her heart tell her to do?"

Before the program began, Kaiser officials conducted a thorough review of First Resort and the services it provides. Shirley Dostal, service manager for Kaiser-Oakland Hospital's obstetrics/gynecology department, told the San Francisco Examiner that officials knew that First Resort's goal was to reduce the number of abortions, but found that the counseling offered there was not biased.

"We sat in on a couple of counseling sessions to assure they were thorough, accurate, and unbiased," Dostal said.

Plunkett told the Examiner that Kaiser officials knew exactly what kind of services First Resort offered. "The people over there know exactly who we are," she said. "Nobody's been misled."

"I'm very irritated that the press is making a wonderful thing into a bad thing," Plunkett added. "We all want to see women make choices they can live with."

Despite the way it ended, NRLC's Johnston said that the idea of a referral program from doctors to pregnancy help centers is a good idea. He suggested that other pro-life centers might want to contact individual physicians and try to start such a program, rather than go through an HMO, which is vulnerable to political pressure.

In California, for example, about 40% of abortions are performed in private doctors' offices, Johnston said. "There may be physicians out there who would refer women to crisis pregnancy centers," he said.

"A lot more women could benefit from this type of referral program."