KY Taxpayers Funding Lethal Lies to Pregnant Women

Add "paying freakazoids to terrorize women" to "subsidizing Big Coal" and everything else on my List of Things For Which I Want My Fucking State Tax Dollars Back.

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress:

Well over half of the states in the country are directly funding “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs), right-wing groups that pose as nonpartisan health clinics while advocating for an anti-abortion agenda. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, 34 states currently have policies that funnel money toward CPCs:



Aside from designating family planning funds for CPCs, states can endorse them in a few other ways that sometimes slip under the radar. Some states have unnecessary restrictions on abortion that require women to undergo a mandatory counseling session or ultrasound procedure before being allowed to terminate a pregnancy, and choose to direct women to CPCs to fulfill those requirements. Or states can sell specialty license plates with pro-life messages, the proceeds of which directly fund CPCs.

For example, a recent NARAL investigation found that Virginia’s Department of Health currently refers low-income women to a list of 18 CPCs where they can receive a free ultrasound before getting an abortion. 

But when women visit those centers, they encounter misinformation about the abortion procedure — typically, false information about abortion’s link to breast cancer and depression. The staff at Virginia’s CPCs was also documented employing emotional manipulation, like writing “Hi, Dad” on the image of an ultrasound before handing it back to a patient. In extreme cases, CPC employees have even refused to turn over the ultrasound results to women who needed to bring them to an abortion clinic.

CPCs advertise themselves as viable alternatives to other women’s health clinics, even though they don’t tend to employ medical professionals and don’t offer the full range of reproductive health services. Multiple outside investigations have caught CPCs’ lies on tape. Women who visit the right-wing “clinics” are frequently told that emergency contraception is the same thing as an abortion, birth control contains carcinogens, condoms aren’t effective at preventing STDs, abortion is extremely dangerous, and women always regret ending a pregnancy.

Those type of emotionally manipulative tactics designed to convince women not to have an abortion typically increase their negative emotions about the experience, but don’t ultimately lead them to change their mind or regret their decision. Ninety percent of women have made up their minds about having an abortion before visiting a doctor or a clinic.

 As Digby writes:

Basically they are harassing pregnant women and girls who have already decided they are not in a position to go through pregnancy and childbirth (as is their constitutional and basic human right.) And the government is helping them do it. Mostly it's just the young, poor and uneducated ones though. The privileged will find places to go that treat them with respect. Most of the women funneled to these brainwashing centers will be unpersuaded as well, since they know instinctively when they're being fed a pile of nonsense. Others, however, especially the younger ones, will be traumatized and misinformed and possible persuaded to be parents when they are not capable of doing so.

Oh, and not that it needs to be pointed out again, but the people who want the government fo fund these "crisis centers" tend to be the same people who refuse to let the government help support the children that are produced. They don't care if either the mother or the child lives or dies once the child emerges from the womb.