Don't Be Fooled By Anti-Choice groups!
Anti-choice groups sometimes advertise that they provide pregnancy tests, family planning and "non-coercive decision-making" counselling. You might have seen one of their advertisements on the bus with names like Birthright, Pregnancy Distress or Crisis Pregnancy Centre. They also advertise in the Yellow Pages under numerous categories such as birth control, family planning, women's reproductive health centres, clinics, psychologists, counsellors and abortion alternatives. These anti-choice organizations make finding legitimate agencies as difficult as navigating your way through a minefield. Finding a pro-choice agency can be particularly discouraging and confusing to women unaware of anti-choice politics.
Often one group will have as many as 26 different listings with different names throughout the Yellow Pages. When you call, however, you might find that all the numbers lead to exactly the same place, with the very same person answering the phone. Another insidious tactic to impede women's access to abortion, is the alteration of the names of recognized pro-choice organizations. For instance, the reputation of the Family Planning Clinic of Calgary has been undermined by an anti-choice group using the name Family Planning Centre. Because the word "Centre" comes alphabetically before "Clinic," the anti-choice organization intercepts women seeking legitimate pregnancy options counselling.
These anti-choice groups are usually run by Catholic or Evangelical Christian churches. They are set up to misinform women, and intimidate them from having abortions. While "options" counsellors counsel women on keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption, they inform women of the risks of abortion (usually pertaining to breast cancer, problems with future pregnancies, and emotional problems). They also inform women on abortion techniques, using graphic, provocative, and often misleading descriptions. For instance, they might describe vacuum aspiration as being 29 times stronger than a home vacuum - this is simply untrue, but it is one of the many graphic and alarmist tactics that anti-choice groups are using.
While anti-choice groups represent themselves as providing pregnancy options, they will not make referrals to doctors or clinics providing abortion, since to do so would be to "compromise their beliefs." Often these clinics will attempt to hide their position behind word games. One clinic, when asked directly if it was pro-choice, replied: "It depends on how we understand the term 'choice.'" Other groups will refer women to anti-choice doctors under the false pretense that these doctors will perform abortions.
Anti-choice centres do provide pregnancy tests, but because they are not medical facilities, they are not authorized to confirm the results. A pregnancy test that would normally take five minutes to process can take over half an hour. While waiting, anti-choice centres use the time to show women videos, photographs and ultrasounds of foetuses at different stages of development. Women are also "counselled" on what they would do if the test turns out "positive."
Anti-choice groups can be very evasive as to the pregnancy test results. Women whose results are actually negative, have been led to believe that the results are "positive," in order that the centre can indoctrinate them in anti-choice opinions. Again, wording is used to confuse and disarm women at a very vulnerable time. Some clinics have told women that the results were "negative," to keep them from seeking an abortion. This deception has, in a few cases, led to serious problems, such as undiagnosed tubal pregnancies.
Once these fake clinics get women inside their doors, they prey upon the vulnerability of their situations, using guilt, fear, intimidation, and exaggerated promises of post-natal support to dissuade women from having abortions.
25th May 2002, 21:13
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