Crisis centers should have to state at the beginning of the call that they provide no information about abortion, contraception, or abortion access. This would at least prevent them from wasting women’s time if they’re looking for that info.
I see no ethical or legal problems with this. The only reason an organization would resist disclosing what they do is if they were trying to lie by omission, in which case, screw them.
I don’t have a problem with it. A state license of this nature shouldn’t be issued to an enterprise with a narrow focus. Would anyone think a state licensed crisis medical center that is not a medical facility could only supply information about homeopathy? One could argue the need for a state to be licensing crisis pregnancy centers that are not medical facilities in the first place, but once they are issuing such licenses the center has to be providing a public service suitable for all the public.
Just to clear up a point of confusion (which I also had). The licensed clinics are medical providers and are required by the law to post information about obtaining an abortion. The unlicensed clinics are not medical providers and are required by the law to say they are not medical providers.
They don’t want to state at the beginning of the call that they don’t provide the service you called about. They want to GET YOU IN THE DOOR. If they start their hard sell over the phone, people hang up; however, if they can get women in the door, a lot are dissuaded long enough to make it past the date after which abortion is no longer legal.
I once saw a TV show on Crisis Pregnancy Centers, where they interviewed several women (all in shadow, most with voice distorted) who had fallen for them after calling for an abortion. They all started out saying “I love my child but…” and to a woman agreed that they wish they’d found a real abortion provider. Most of them said that at this point, now that they knew their child, they wouldn’t change things, and even one woman who had put her child up for adoption said she wished she’d had an abortion instead, but she still wouldn’t change what was already done; nonetheless, they really wished they’d been wiser, or “clued in,” and not fallen for the tricks of the CPC. They were, no surprise, all very young when they were unexpectedly pregnant. Most were teens.
Those places are really evil.
Problem parsing. Are you saying that you are sure they don’t present abortion as the only solution, or that you are sure it’s the only solution they present?
Well yeah, that’s why I suggest a law requiring them to disclose up front that they don’t provide abortions.
People seem to have legal and ethical qualms about forcing them to provide info about state services. OK, I can see that. But I can’t see any reasonable constitutional argument against forcing them to disclose up front that they don’t provide abortion information.
But PP begins by not being “an abortion clinic”, in the sense that it’s not the only pregnancy-related service they provide, at all. Selling them as abortion clinics is a disfavor not only to PP but to many women who don’t know they are an accessible source of gynecological care.
As the thread is about ethics and not the law, I didn’t want to get into the legal questions which I personally find interesting. I will say that from a constitutional matter, the issue is one of compelled speech and i don’t think the law will stand. 6-3.
okay, but not sure why you were replying to my post. I agree the law before the courts is problematic as far as compelled speech. I propose a legislative solution to that I think passes ethical and legal muster, to force these crisis lines to disclose immediately that they provide no information about abortion services. This would cut down some of the deceptive and underhanded practice. It is not unreasonable to compel them, as a “pregnancy crisis center”, to state up front that they provide no information about abortion. It’s both true and useful and requires no endorsement of abortion or provision of abortion services.
How is this different than many of the requirements that women seeking abortions be told false information. One example: In Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a South Dakota law requiring doctors to give patients false or misleading information about the suicide risk in women who have abortions was not unconstitutional.
They should not be allowed to give abortion as the only solution. They should also offer adoption or keeping the baby.
And when a woman makes a choice, they should just shut up and help her execute it.
While you’ve made it clear what you believe PP SHOULD do, you haven’t actually responded. Eonwe’s question was whether you believe PP ACTUALLY DOES that, or whether you believe PP hard-sells abortion and withholds information about alternatives.
I have no problem with so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” being required to post information about alternatives.
Remember that these places have long operated on the basis of deception and trickery (including scamming women about bogus links between abortion and breast cancer). The least they can do is be up front about what they are and what services they don’t have.
At a pro-life conference in 2012, Abby Johnson, a supporter of CPCs, explained their main strategy. “We want to appear neutral from the outside. The best call, the best client you ever get, is one who thinks they’re walking into an abortion clinic. The one that thinks you provide abortions.”
Requiring clinics offering abortion services to discuss alternatives is fine with me (I think such regulations already exist, and even without them the clinics are far better than their anti-abortion “counterparts” when it comes to providing unbiased information).