On Oct. 23, Attorney General of California Rob Bonta along with 15 other attorneys general, including Letitia James of New York and Matthew Platkin of New Jersey, made public an open letter calling crisis pregnancy centers (CPC) sources of “misinformation and harm.”
As crime runs rampant in our cities, these 16 elected officials are spending taxpayer-funded resources harassing life-saving crisis pregnancy centers for not being what they never claimed to be: full-service “reproductive health clinics.”
The impetus for the letter was to signal support for Yelp in its ongoing legal spars with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the review site’s descriptions of CPCs. Since the Dobbs decision, Yelp added disclaimers to CPC center review pages alerting users that the centers do not provide abortion services, even adding language like, “May not have licensed medical professionals onsite.”
The attorneys, hiding under the statement that Yelp’s efforts “ensure that consumers receive clear information” sadly lack pursuing the same “clear information” for abortion facilities advertising where very real damage has been done to countless numbers of women for more than 50 years. In fact, the AGs even go so far as to deny the personal experiences of these women.
As a post-abortive woman and a person who has worked in ministry with other women who have experienced abortion for the past 30 years, I represent thousands who have sought our help with the damage of abortion, which Bonta’s letter denies.
Claiming in their letter that abortion is “health care” is itself misinformation. Abortion is the destruction of a separate unique human being, an unborn baby, a truth still often hidden from those who go to abortion facilities. The failure to mention in their claim to “protect public health,” the lies, risks, and false information often given out by these facilities is staggering.
We know there are lies, and purposeful omittance of information because many of us have been victims of it. I was denied knowledge of the development of my unborn son and an explanation of the procedure I went through. The experience left me traumatized for years, yet by the standards implied by the attorneys general my experience did not even happen.
Crisis pregnancy centers do not claim to be health care facilities, so you must wonder why these 16 AGs feel the need to attack them on that premise. Instead, they provide much needed assistance to women who choose to have their babies, something that should be praised and welcomed instead of attempting to shut them down.
The AG’s letter states that CPCs offer maternity and baby supplies “Usually only if pregnant individuals attend religious-based programming.” This is perhaps the biggest untruth in a document that claims to want to eliminate “misinformation.” I am familiar with many CPCs and not one that I know of requires religious-based programming.
It is obvious the AGs are judging CPCs on what they have decided should be their standards and practices instead of what they actually are — places where women can hear the full truth about abortion and how they can get the support they need to bring their babies to term if they so choose.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the letter was the blatant denial of the very real repercussions of abortion for countless women:
CPCs provide “misleading information” connecting abortions to, inter alia, infertility, breast cancer, and mental illness, claiming “that abortion directly results in a fictitious condition called either ‘post abortion syndrome’ or ‘post abortion stress'” as well as “grief and regret.”
As someone who assists 100 to 200 people each year suffering from abortion, this denial of what many of us have experienced shows ignorance of proven facts and a total lack of the reality of the negative effects of abortion, not to mention a complete disregard for our experiences and suffering we have endured.
I am tired of having to justify my experience because of those who have an extreme pro-abortion agenda. Some live with “grief and regret” for decades, afraid to come forward because they are told their pain does not exist. Under the guise of exposing “misinformation” the AGs themselves are promoting misinformation. These women deserve to have their experiences legitimized.
The AGs can reject the fact that abortion can cause infertility in some women and mental suffering, and they can call “post-abortion stress” fictitious, but it is very real to the hundreds of people who reach out to us every year in the New York area. The claim that there is no “grief and regret” shows that these public figures who should be representing all people have never taken the time to speak to the thousands of women that are part of campaigns like “Silent No More” and “Operation Outcry.”
Also lacking in their letter claiming to expose “misinformation” is the concern for women undergoing chemical abortions. Many have been told how easy this is and that they can end their pregnancy in the comfort of their homes only to then have to face the trauma of seeing their dead unborn child. This is something they will live with for the rest of their lives. Or the miscalculations of pregnancies due to obtaining the chemicals online (so much for a doctor and their patient) only to find your child much more developed than you were led to believe.
These AGs can claim they are protecting women, but more and more of us are learning the truth not from words like theirs but sadly through our own experiences. Try as they might, they cannot hide what we know to be true.
Lawmakers should be more concerned with the misinformation in the abortion facilities that actually kill the unborn and very often harm women, mentally and physically, than the CPCs that aid pregnant moms in need.
