By Tabitha Redder/managing editor
Women, if you’re pregnant or plan to conceive, beware the insidious “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” that already blanket the nation in shocking numbers.
Essentially, these crisis centers are fake abortion clinics usually run by religious organizations with a single goal: to deceive vulnerable women into keeping their babies.
As seen in an undercover video from Vice News, these CPCs lure in women with promises of pregnancy counseling, free sonograms or free pregnancy tests and give the illusion of offering abortions. They gain the client’s trust with neutral advertising hiding the fact that they are a religious-based organization with an agenda.
Once there, women are often subjected to harassment, bombarded by anti-abortion media and given extremely inaccurate and terrifying medical information in hopes of scaring away potential abortion clients.
These places don’t offer abortions at all or help women obtain one.
A 2013 New York Times article reports there are 2,500 CPCs in the country and only 1,800 clinics that offer abortions.
In 2011, Texas lawmakers drastically cut funding for family-planning clinics and increased funding to CPCs, but the most shocking part?CPCs are unregulated and federally funded, and their numbers are growing while legitimate health clinics that actually help women are forced to shut down.
This is possible thanks to the Texas Alternatives to Abortion program created in 2005. Initially, the program was funded with $2.5 million per year, but this amount has increased to $4 million since 2009, according to the NARAL Pro-Choice Texas Foundation.
The Texas Observer reports that as of December 2011, the program has received $26.3 million in public funding since its creation. Texas CPCs are awarded roughly $4.15 million a year.
This program was literally never intended to provide medical services for women, only to promote childbirth, yet it receives more money from the government to deceive women than an actual medical clinic.
Women’s health clinics offer other beneficial services such as access to birth control, breast cancer screenings and gynecological exams. The CPCs offer none of this and are still getting more funding.
Even if someone doesn’t agree with abortion and thinks it’s morally wrong — it’s inarguably wrong to purposefully mislead people.
In a state with the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation, women need more options.
The country, well, those with power in government, values religious ideals more than the health and well-being of women, and that is so wrong.
