In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Meaghan Winter discusses the growth of crisis pregnancy centers, noting, "Abortion foes are subsidizing these centers with public funds, while pushing to defund comprehensive health care providers," such as Planned Parenthood.
Winter notes that while federal lawmakers' latest efforts to defund Planned Parenthood likely will be unsuccessful, "legislators in at least 11 states have proposed bills designed to restrict Planned Parenthood from providing health care to low-income women." According to Winter, when health care "providers like Planned Parenthood are shut down, they leave low-income women with few alternatives for reproductive and preventive health care."
She adds, "While lawmakers say they'll transfer funds to community health centers, there are too few to meet the need." As a result, "thousands of women seeking low-cost health care are ending up at crisis pregnancy centers," Winter writes, noting that with "more than 3,000 [CPCs] advertising free services, like options counseling, pregnancy tests and ultrasounds" across the country, "they now outnumber abortion clinics by at least three to one."
She explains that while crisis pregnancy centers "may seem innocuous," they are often staffed by individuals without medical licenses and who "belong to religious organizations that actively discourage them from recommending contraception, let alone abortion." Citing her own research, Winter writes that CPC staff give women information that is "often rife with omissions and misinformation." She notes that speakers at a conference for CPC organizations "discussed strategies to tell women" the medically unsupported claims "that abortion could cause difficulties ranging from infertility, suicide, breast cancer and failure to bond with future children."
According to Winter, "Some of the states that are trying to defund Planned Parenthood are welcoming these centers." She writes, "Eleven states fund them directly, sometimes with federal funds, and often through programs intended for low-income women and children." For example, "In Ohio, legislators provided $1 million over the next two years for the centers," while the state Senate "passed a bill [SB 214] last month that would restrict funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates, cutting access to breast and cervical cancer screenings, H.I.V. testing and violence against women programs," she writes. Meanwhile, Winter adds, "Since Gov. John R. Kasich took office in 2011, the state has passed restrictions that have cut the number of abortion clinics by about half."
In contrast, Winter notes that California in October "enacted a law [AB 775] that requires unlicensed centers to disclose that they are not licensed medical providers and requires licensed centers to tell women that the state has programs for affordable family planning, abortion services and prenatal care." According to Winter, a conservative "legal organization immediately sued to block the law, arguing that it infringed on the religious freedoms of the centers."
Winter writes, "When a woman is coerced to continue an [unintended] pregnancy through misinformation or lack of access, she loses control of her body, education, finances -- her future. The struggle for reproductive rights is inextricable from other movements for racial and economic justice." She calls for the repeal of antiabortion-rights legislation, noting, "We will not achieve equal opportunity until a poor woman has the same sovereignty over her body and her future as a wealthy man" (Winter, New York Times, 11/12).
