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Virginia Crisis Pregnancy Centers Peddle Myths about Abortion

Here in South Dakota, we celebrate liberty this week by taking away more of women's liberty to make their own health decisions. Yesterday, we expanded our already draconian restrictions on abortion by excluding holidays and weekends from the 72-hour waiting period for abortions. Ladies, South Dakota knows you shut your brains off on non-work days, so if you need an abortion today, you won't be able to get one until next Monday at the earliest.

While you wait, South Dakota forces you to submit to counseling at a "pregnancy help center," where unregulated, non-medical volunteers will try to stop you from having an abortion.

And if they are anything like the pregnancy help/crisis pregnancy centers in Virginia, those state registered centers will lie to you:

One of Virginia’s leading abortion rights groups says about 70 percent of the state’s crisis pregnancy centers told patients that the procedure leads to psychological damage, alcoholism, drug addiction or eating disorders.

The NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia Foundation says when it conducted a year-long survey it also found that more than 40 percent of crisis centers in the state tell patients that abortions also can cause infertility and pregnancy complications and that a little less than a third tell patients that abortions cause breast cancer [Ian Shapira, "Virginia Abortion Seekers Face Manipulation, Misinformation, Non-Profit Report Finds," Washington Post, 2013.07.01].

The above "counseling" gets science wrong. But South Dakota is willing to intrude on women's right to seek medical advice of their choosing and force them to go to anti-abortion centers that feel fully justified in lying to fulfill their ideological mission.

Note also that you can go to Planned Parenthood Sioux Falls for abortion information and services, as well as a host of other valuable women's health services, but the South Dakota Department of Health won't mention that organization in its discussion of abortion alongside the ideological bushwah peddlers.

4 Comments

  1. Deb Geelsdottir 2013.07.02

    The GOP seems shame free in matters such as this. Similar behavior is going on in TX and other red states.

    The GOP War on Women is real and ongoing.

    They could easily show the above statement untrue by simply restricting sexual behavior of men, passing strong domestic violence laws, strengthening penalties against those businesses that engage in sexual discrimination, mandating pay equity, and similar actions.

    Instead, Republicans cut and slash programs that women need. Yes, GOP is indeed waging a War on Women. How shameful.

  2. Roger Elgersma 2013.07.03

    Equal rights would restrict sexual behavior of both sexes. No wife beating and no cheating either. Keep it equal. Women can have no strings attached sex by getting an abortion and men have to pay child support. Not equal. Courts give women preference in custody is not equal either. Equal pay would be fair and just. And some of those 'myths' are true. But if your main goal is to get rid of your kid, you will no matter what lie you have to tell and then in divorce court you want us to think that a woman is automatically a care giver. Would a natural care giver want to kill her kid, and not have psychological damage later. Well Dads are care givers also. Research says that a man that was a participatory parent will go through never ending grief if he loses custody in divorce. But women think if they get us a good job and a lot of sex that we will be ok.

  3. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.07.03

    Roger, as long as we see the war on women, I can't help but regard complaints that men are treated unfairly on issues like child support as baseless kvetching. Society still gives men huge advantages. So does biology: we bear no burden in pregnancy. Forget equality: when it comes to child-bearing, women deserve special treatment, special protection, and special rights. I'd be happy just to get women to the level of equal consideration.

    As a step toward equality in South Dakota, how about we require men to undergo a 72-hour waiting period, a background check, and sex counseling before filling their Viagra prescription?

  4. Deb Geelsdottir 2013.07.03

    I like your idea for the viagra refill Cory.

    Regarding factual evidence, there is none showing that women who have abortions endure greater psychological trauma than if they'd borne the child.

    Even so, and amid an onslaught of passionate comments that may ensue, the War on Women continues. Control over her own body as a free and independent adult human being is only one battle of this multifaceted, almost entirely Republican led, War on Women.

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