Every state in the United States has a law on the books against deceptive advertising, and pregnancy help centers operate in every state in the U.S., with at least one in 51 percent of all the counties in the nation.
Yet elected officials are proclaiming louder than ever how pregnancy centers use “deceptive advertising practices” to “lure” women into life-saving services. As Roe was being overturned last June, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., introduced a federal bill called the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act, or the SAD Act, aimed squarely at pregnancy centers’ advertising practices.
With the sea change at the Supreme Court regarding Roe, such a bill is suddenly extremely important, right?
Wrong. Maloney has proposed essentially the same bill every year for the last 20 years. Twenty years of introducing an order, of sorts, intended to stop so-called “deceptive advertising.”
According to Law Insider, “Deceptive advertising means creating, using, or promoting the use of any advertising material, promotional literature, testimonial, guarantee, warranty, label, brand, insignia, or other representation, however disseminated or published, which is misleading, false, or untruthful.”
If every state already has laws against deceptive advertising and if pregnancy centers are, in their opponents’ words, advertising deceptively, why is another law required? You’d think with 2,800-plus pregnancy centers in America, the current laws would have been easy to use to stop the “deceptive advertising” practices the abortion proponents rail against. But that’s not happened.
And now there are new laws being passed or sought in various pro-abortion states: New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and so on. Why are new laws necessary?
Perhaps pregnancy centers are really only guilty of standing against Big Abortion and its deep pockets and bought-off politicians. It is no coincidence that organizations such as the National Abortion Federation, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood often endorse these bills. These same politicians are now leveraging their states’ taxpayer pockets by creating new laws with vague investigative powers often coupled with enforcement mechanisms designed to harass caring people that simply want to help women make a different choice than abortion.
While all such discussions are reminders to review our information for accuracy, proper citations, and good wording, it should be easy to recognize that those seeking these new laws are not championing truth and good advertising. No, they are championing abortion ideology and protecting Big Abortion profits.
Pregnancy centers set the standard for true compassion and support for women. Women who find and utilize these pregnancy help services overwhelmingly give pregnancy centers 99 percent satisfaction ratings for the care they receive because it helps them through difficult times and puts them on a path toward success as parents.
So to these politicians, I say, “You can’t handle the truth.” It is the scientific truth of life in the womb — the unique humanity of every child from conception — and the truth of the harmful nature of abortion that they cannot handle in good faith.
The need for women to find something better than abortion compels us to compete in the marketplace for her attention as she’s facing an unintended pregnancy. And we will compete because lives depend on us to do so.
