Pro-Abortionists Crank Up Campaign to Mislead Public -- Part One of Two

Editor's note. The following story is one that deserves the widest possible audience. It appears in the April issue of National Right to Life News (which is on its way to you), but I want those whose first source of information is the web to read it as well.

By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., NRL-ETF Director of Education & Research

Why are newspapers all over the country suddenly publishing articles about how Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are supposedly using "false" information to try to change the minds of pregnant women about abortion? Mere coincidence? Not likely.

The Abortion Establishment's campaign against CPCs (also known as "pregnancy care centers") is an old one. But as the number of CPCs has grown, as some centers have begun to receive modest federal funding, and as the Movement has grown far more effective in getting the truth about abortion's risks and realities into the hands of pregnant women, the attack has intensified.

In the past few months, there have been reports on the work of CPCs from ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, TIME magazine, the Palm Beach Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Each news article or report brings its own slant to the story. Some paint more positive portrayals of the work of CPC counselors than do others, but they inevitably bring up three charges which they treat as established facts, rather than allegations from parties with a vested interest in maintaining a monopoly over what pregnant women are told.

They charge that women visiting CPCs are misinformed about the link between abortion and breast cancer, misled into thinking that abortion can harm their future fertility, and told they may face depression or other psychological issues if they abort.

These same three charges happen to serve as the central complaints of a report issued last summer by California pro-abortion Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.). And, coincidentally, Waxman's report appeared exactly a month after a scathing report by the National Abortion Federation (NAF) that harshly criticized the "tactics" and funding of CPCs.

Journalists visited several of the centers, and generally found the staff members calm, friendly, and competent. But they still ended up treating the charges of the Waxman report as fact. What the report says, however, and what the report proves are two very different stories. More homework would have revealed that deception and denial are far more characteristic of the abortion trade than they are of the fine people trying to preserve the lives of women and their unborn children.

Complaints Surface in NAF Report

The National Abortion Federation is a trade association for abortion clinics. NAF's June 15, 2006, report, "Crisis Pregnancy Centers: An Affront to Choice," makes a number of complaints. It charges that CPCs do not promote all options equally (they don't refer for abortions); they target young, low-income, and women of color (who happen to be the most abortion vulnerable and the group Planned Parenthood identifies as its "core clients"); and they are often connected with religious organizations (one supposes they missed Planned Parenthood's annual prayer breakfasts), etc.

NAF is clearly frustrated by the recent infusion of very limited amounts of state and federal money into abortion alternatives. "They should not receive public support from taxpayers to continue their deception campaigns to dissuade women from choosing abortion," NAF declares. "Concerned citizens must work together to expose the truth about CPCs and stop their public funding and support." (NAF expresses no concern about the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars going to groups like Planned Parenthood each year.)

One of NAF's greatest concerns, however, is its contention that "CPCs have a history of intentionally misleading women to prevent them from accessing their full range of reproductive health options." Part of the "misinformation," NAF says, is warnings by CPCs to women that "having an abortion will put them at higher risk for developing breast cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, infertility, and other serious medical conditions." So, who is right?

Waxman's False and Misleading Report on CPC "Misinformation"

Waxman's report, "False and Misleading Health Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers," issued barely a month later by the Minority Staff of Committee on Government Reform, picks up on several of NAF's complaints. It says that pregnancy resource centers do not counsel or refer for abortions and notes that "over $30 million in federal funds went to more than 50 pregnancy resource centers between 2001 and 2005." (For comparison, Planned Parenthood's revenues from "government grants and contracts" during the same period exceeded $1.2 billion!)

The bulk of the report is devoted to the results of an investigation requested by Waxman into "the medical accuracy" of information the centers provided over the phone to someone posing as a pregnant teenager. Waxman charges that 20 out of the 23 centers they reached provided "false or misleading information" to the callers, highlighting claims of an abortion/breast cancer link, a connection between abortion and infertility, and the relationship of abortion to mental illness.

The report tries to document what phone counselors told callers, but is too busy to consider any medical evidence for any claims the clinics might have made.

Waxman's report declares that vacuum aspiration abortion "does not pose an increased risk of infertility or other fertility problems." It cites the statement of the author of one textbook (that "Fertility is not altered by an elective abortion") and "one authority" from a 1990 medical text asserting that researchers looking at studies from all over the world had concluded that a single vacuum aspiration abortion did not increase the risk of future complications, miscarriage, stillbirth, ectopic pregnancy, infant death, or congenital malformation of subsequent pregnancies.

Again, Waxman accepted the broad dismissals made by his selected experts but failed to look into the actual evidence that supports what CPCs are saying. One study not looked at by the author of the 1990 medical text was a 1993 study from the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showing more than doubled risk of future infertility among aborting women.

Another missed study from the March 1998 issue of the American Journal of Public Health showed that aborting women had a 50% increased risk of a subsequent ectopic or tubal pregnancy.

The writers of the Waxman report might have seen a 1989 report from the Journal of Reproductive Medicine revealing increased risk of miscarriage in subsequent pregnancies, or a 1993 report from Gynecologic and Obstetric Investigation explaining how forced dilation may decrease cervical resistance. But they did not mention them.

As researchers Byron Calhoun and Brian Rooney have shown in their recent article in the summer 2003 edition of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, evidence of abortion's association with subsequent premature births is mounting. Waxman's staff certainly should have seen recent study from the April 2005 British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. That study showed that women who have had abortions were at higher risk of very preterm delivery in subsequent pregnancies than women with no such history

Like the web sites of many pro-abortion groups, Waxman's report trumpets the fact that groups such as the American Psychological Association (APA) deny the existence of "Post-Abortion Syndrome" and quotes an APA panel declaring abortion "usually psychologically benign." This is important and warrants close attention.

Despite heavy coverage in the news in the months prior to his report, Waxman's group altogether ignored the findings of a large, well-designed study of New Zealand researcher David Fergusson that appeared in the January 2006 Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Fergusson, a self-described "pro-choicer," and his team found "those having an abortion had elevated rates of subsequent mental health problems including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviors and substance abuse disorders."

Fergusson validated the work of researchers such as Priscilla Coleman, David Reardon, and Jesse Cougle who have identified a link between abortion and different forms of psychological distress. He also specifically challenged the pronouncements of the APA as being based on studies with certain methodological limitations, including several of those cited by the Waxman report.

The Most Dangerous Disinformation

While it seems natural that reporters would take material they receive from interest groups and politicians as possible material for stories, it also seems that they would also investigate the claims to see whether or not they hold water. For the most part, that wasn't done in this latest media brushfire.

Consider who has the financial interest (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) in convincing women that abortion is benign. Shouldn't that make an outside observer skeptical when the abortion industry tells a woman that her unborn child is nothing more than a "blob of tissue," denies that the child has a heartbeat at three weeks, tells a woman that abortion won't hurt and that there's no reason to think it could have an impact on her subsequent pregnancies, and insists that there will be no negative psychological ramifications if she aborts her child?

They are the ones who talk about "choice," but rarely offer the practical alternatives found at local CPCs. They complain about women not being fully informed of their options, but oppose informed consent or right to know laws that would enable women to hear about abortion's risks, to connect with resources in their area, or to see pictures of the developing baby.

When women with unanticipated pregnancies hear the facts about abortion, when they know there will be people to stand beside them and support them through the coming months, when they see pictures of their own children on an ultrasound machine, more of them choose life.

(See Part Two that discusses where you can readily find up-to-date, accurate information.)

Part Two