Pregnancy Resource Centers Aren’t the Ones Faking Care

Elizabeth Warren recently pushed for legislation to shut down pregnancy resource centers in her state. She said:

In Massachusetts, right now, those crisis pregnancy centers that are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber true abortion clinics by 3 to 1. We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts. And we need to shut them down all around the country. 

Senator Warren is angry that pregnancy resource centers
are allowed to exist in her world, where she thinks the only
choice ought to be abortion. Screenshot from here.

Such centers may outnumber abortion clinics 3 to 1 in Massachusetts, but they’re 4 to 1 in most of the country. They are not, however, there to fool people looking for an abortion; they are there to help women facing an unexpected pregnancy—usually because they’re young, unmarried, and without resources, and they don’t know what to do.

There is only one answer at an abortion clinic: get an abortion.

At a pregnancy resource center there is medical help, pregnancy information, connection to government and private charity resources, help in deciding between choosing adoption or raising the child. They get resources either way—even on up through perinatal care and getting housing and baby clothing and supplies.

None of these choices is available at the place where they call themselves pro-choice.

This past Tuesday there was an issue on the ballot in Kentucky, a pro-life amendment, called “Value Them Both,” intended to clarify the state constitution—in which some judge “found” a right to abortion in 2019. The amendment would have meant the legislature could regulate abortion, now that the Dobbs decision gave that authority back to the states.

But the amendment failed. By about 17 percentage points. In a state that on the surface looks fairly conservative. Trump won the state by 15 points in 2020.

Pro-life spokesperson Mallory Carroll said:

The abortion lobby’s message to voters was rife with lies that ultimately drowned out the truth. Because of tonight’s results, Kansas could shortly become home to unrestricted abortion on demand—even late-term abortion without limits, paid for by taxpayers. The people and their elected legislators now have no recourse to use the tools of democracy to enact laws that reflect consensus.

The pro-abortion lobby has been gathering funding—including at taxpayer expense—for decades. They had millions to throw at this issue, the first on the ballot since the Dobbs decision.

Polling shows that nationwide most people want to severely limit abortion but worry about removing exemptions for the life of the mother, and also for victims of rape and incest. Since well before the SCOTUS ruling in June, the pro-abortion lobby has been claiming everything means forcing women to die and have no recourse regardless of circumstances—“It’s all A Handmaid’s Tale in real life!” they cry.

If you're wondering where your state now stands, check out the interactive map provided by the ACLJ.

for the ACLJ's interactive map on current abortion laws, go here

I can’t tell you exactly what lies were told in Kentucky, but I imagine they’re similar to lies being told in Texas. One is that women won’t get care for an ectopic pregnancy. Not true. Termination of that type of pregnancy has never been defined as an abortion—because the embryo is never implanted in the uterus; it cannot mature and become a baby, and is a high risk to the mother’s life. Nothing about outlawing abortion affects that.

There was a recent story of a woman whose baby died in utero, and she claimed that the doctors wouldn’t treat her until she had undergone multiple ultrasounds verifying that the child was not alive. And she was forced to keep carrying a dead fetus for two weeks. How can I say this without hurting someone’s feelings? She lied. That is not the procedure for a fetus that dies, and the procedure did not change after the Dobbs decision meant abortion was outlawed in Texas.

Once it is verified that there is no heartbeat, the baby is delivered, likely by C-section. This is not an abortion, because it does not terminate the life of the unborn baby, which has already died. Leaving a dead baby to degenerate within the mother could lead to serious consequences for the mother, possibly sepsis. Even in this story, simply having a second ultrasound to verify that there was no heartbeat was all that was needed; she could have come in the next day, and her doctor probably told her that. He probably mentioned nothing about the change in law after Dobbs—because there was no change. Anyway, at most it would be mere days before the procedure is done.

This was the unfortunate circumstance of a friend of mine just last month (post-Dobbs)—a mother of many children, who wanted the child, and who would never consider an abortion. She learned the child no longer had a heartbeat; she scheduled and had a C-section; she is in the process of healing both physically and emotionally. The family held a graveside service for the lost child—just as we had done for our child who had been born alive prematurely and lived only a few hours.

People are worried about the loss of choice for women who are victims of rape or incest—in other words, who did not choose the behavior that led to the pregnancy. I understand that. But it is already the exception in most states that outlaw abortion, and is an appropriate debate to have in the legislature. It’s not currently an exception in Texas—only life of the mother, I believe. And I think if we better informed and better supported women in that rare circumstance, people would clamor much less about it.

I’ve always been pro-life. Yet I have always assumed there would be exceptions made for the life of the mother—which in most cases means that the baby can’t survive either, so it is a matter of saving the mother’s life or no one’s. My Church actually makes exceptions for rape and incest, in addition to life of the mother. So I have been open to the conversation concerning those exceptions. I’ve been concerned that, as a society, we do not well support a woman who has suffered rape. We don’t even do a very good job of tracking down and bringing the rapist to justice. And I thought giving her no way out of propagating the seed of the rapist would lengthen and possibly intensify her trauma. I’m beginning to rethink that exception.

A friend of mine phone coaches women finding themselves pregnant and unable to support themselves, let alone a baby. She has been there, in crisis. I’ll briefly (and anonymously) tell her story, and what she taught me. She was fifteen and pregnant, with her 18-year-old alcoholic boyfriend. He offered no support. His mother pressured her to get an abortion; the woman had been a teen mom of two and knew how bad that was going to be.

My friend comes from a dysfunctional family, to say the least. Her parents had broken up when she was two. Her mother remarried when she was seven, to an abuser. My friend suffered sexual abuse from a series of abusers. She lacked protection and direction. The mother had taken them to church sporadically, so she had a surface knowledge of religion. My friend actually prayed, not really knowing who she was praying to, that she and her boyfriend could marry and have this family. But that wasn’t going to happen with this young man.

Not knowing what to do, she gave in to the pressure and went to an abortion clinic. Right away they put in a cervical dilator; she was supposed to go back the next day for the abortion. This insertion was painful, and it scared her. She went home and told her mother she was getting an abortion. Her mother was upset and to told her not to do it, and she agreed; she didn’t want to go through with it. She called her OB about the cervical dilator, to get it out, and was told it was probably too late; it would cause a miscarriage. Years later she learned this was not necessarily true, but she was a 15-year-old scared little girl, looking for help from adult experts who weren’t helping. She told her mom she had no choice now but to go through with it, and her mother told her not to come home if she did.

The boyfriend got drunk the night before and bailed on even taking her to the clinic. So her “friend” who had been having sex with her boyfriend behind her back ended up taking her. She remembers two vivid things about that clinic experience: the extremely sharp pain when her baby was dismembered and ripped from her; and the horrible sucking sounds and noise of the vacuum machine.

There were after effects. As she recalls,

Because I was still in the dark literally, a friend later took me to Planned Parenthood for birth control pills. They gave me a year’s worth of pills. The doctor didn’t know my medical history and probably didn’t care (and they failed to disclose the risks of the pill, that the WHO has it classified as a Class 1 Carcinogen, or how being abstinent could have really helped me emotionally and physically). I tried to tell myself that it was okay, but I knew deep down it was not okay—I was not okay. Physically, I worried if I would ever be able to have children. Had the abortion made me barren? Emotionally, I felt such shame and regret. Spiritually, I felt so ashamed that I thought God would never forgive me and I would be punished for the evil I committed. My boyfriend and I broke up, and I stuffed everything deep down inside and tried to pretend it didn’t happen, and no one spoke of it.

There’s more they don’t tell you at these places. She adds:

One of the things the pro-choice people never tell you is that when you become pregnant you are already a mom and that an abortion doesn’t take care of your problem; it actually stays with you the rest of your life. You are the mom of a dead child, and you can never undo that. Women that endure abortion suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When you look at the symptoms—difficulty concentrating, depression, anger, anxiety, fear, being unable to sleep—numbing yourself with drugs and alcohol trying to forget the most horrible thing ever that has ever happened, it doesn’t work.

The abortion didn’t get rid of her problems. She continued drinking and doing drugs, and got pregnant again at 19; the father, again, was an abusive alcoholic. But this time when pressured to abort the baby, she knew she would never do that again. Off and on she hoped to form a family with the father, but again that wasn’t going to work, and she ended the contact. But having that baby girl, at age 20, gave her a new purpose in life, and led to her connection with God, which changed everything.

She thought that with a past like hers, she would probably never marry and have any more children. But good fortune came her way at 25. And she has spent the next couple of decades living a totally different family life than the one she grew up in.

I’m interested in the detail she told me about knowing she had this child that died, that should be in her life, or at least should be alive. There’s a hole there, and it is never filled. Because I have lost a child, I know what that feels like.

Hers was different from a rape case. But she has since had quite a lot of experience with rape victims. That missing child is what they experience after an abortion as well. What they have is the trauma of rape, and on top of that they experience the trauma of a dead child—that hole that is never filled. No one warns them. They get told, “Let’s just get rid of that problem for you.” But it doesn’t solve the problem; it adds another one that may be even more traumatic.

There was another story, told on Glenn Beck’s program back in May (May 4, 2022), by a black woman, Shemeka Michelle, who is pro-life but had had an abortion. Her story was that, while she had always been pro-life, she was with a man she should not have been with. They already had a child together, and he was not a good father, or provider, or protector. Before she succeeded in leaving him, she found herself pregnant again. His mother told her to go ahead with an abortion but not tell the father—because he was against abortion but would be as shiftless and irresponsible as he had ever been. She was about seven weeks pregnant. She asked the doctor what she would see on an ultrasound, and he told her she’d see nothing; it was just a clump of cells.

Shameka Michelle tells her story on the Glenn Beck Program, May 4, 2022
screenshot from here

She went on with her life, and then some years later was pregnant under better conditions, within a good marriage. She had an ultrasound at about that same point in the pregnancy. The happy technician showed her the baby, with heartbeat, and head and arms and legs. It should have been a happy life event—and it was. But it was also a shocking awareness that the baby she had aborted years before was not a clump of cells; it was a growing human being, like this one she was pregnant with.

She believes that if she had been told the truth the first time, she would not have had the abortion. And she believes—and data bears this out—most women, if they were shown a good quality ultrasound of their living baby, they would not abort. Knowing it is a baby, and not just a clump of cells, makes a huge difference to a pregnant woman.

Pro-abortionists do not care for women in difficult circumstances; they prey on them. And they are working hard to prevent anyone from having real choices.

Pregnancy Resource Centers, on the other hand, offer young women actual help and hope, without inflicting further trauma on them. We need more of these. 

While we're at it, we need more intact families that teach their children right from wrong. And we need more cultural support for young women—and young men—to stay committed to abstinence before marriage and complete fidelity within marriage. Age-old truths are still true.