by Angie Best-Boss
I have a confession to make. It's time to come out of the closet. As a feminist, I don't automatically hate all crisis pregnancy centers (or CPC’s.) There. I've said it. Some caring, compassionate women I know work in them and are clearly upfront with all of their clients about their biases and what they are hoping the clients will choose. Women know at the beginning what party line they get in exchange for free pregnancy tests and other assistance. That's fair. You don't like it, pick another place to get information.
My beef is with folks who aren't straight up about their biases. That's why I've got a bone to pick with the American Pregnancy Association.
Sounds innocuous, right? Look online; it looks good. It's a gorgeous site - plenty of information - hell, I've even quoted it in an article I wrote. You'd never know there was anything sinister about it.
But let's start at the very beginning... The American Pregnancy Association evolved from the American Pregnancy Helpline, established by Mike and Anne Sheaffer in 1995. The couple advertised their desire to adopt a baby on two billboards in Dallas and set up a hotline to respond to the resulting calls from pregnant women. The Sheaffer’s started the crisis pregnancy center called America's Crisis Pregnancy Helpline in 1995. That CPC was later renamed America's Pregnancy Helpline. In 2003, that organization spawned the American Pregnancy Association. Both the Helpline and the APA continue to exist, ostensibly as separate entities; in reality, at one call center, at the same address.
So what? A non-profit organization with an agenda bills itself as a health education organization, without disclosing its origins and ties to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Here's one example of why it's a problem. A handy-dandy checklist encourages pregnant moms and dads considering abortion to ask themselves a list of questions (http://www.thehelpline.org/unplanned-pregnancy/abortion/questions-to-ask-yourself/), including these:
Do I want to have children in the future?
The assumption we are expected to make, of course, is that if you do, you better not get an abortion. The Mayo Clinic's take? "Research has shown that both abortion by medication (medical abortion) and abortion by surgery (surgical abortion) very rarely result in infertility or complications in subsequent pregnancies."
Did I mention the APA is run by a doctor who may or may not have a PhD in psychology, but no medical training?
Does breast cancer run in my family?
This makes a not-so-subtle reference to the long-discredited link between abortion and breast cancer. In fact, the American Cancer Society says the scientific evidence does not support a causal association between induced abortion and breast cancer.
Here's another reason why it isn't fair not to disclose your agenda when you are counseling women on their medical choices. On the unplanned pregnancy page, there is an article on a woman's three choices, with a suggestion to find out about the resources available by calling a "pregnancy specialist" toll-free at 1-800-672-2296. So I called.
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/unplannedpregnancy/makingadecision.html
I asked the woman who answered if she was a pregnancy specialist. She said no, but she would refer me to someone who was.
I gave her my city and she referred me to a local crisis pregnancy center. I said I was interested in finding out about abortion as one of the options in an unplanned pregnancy and I might not be able to get information I wanted from the Crisis Pregnancy Center. Could she refer me to another agency instead? Nope, she responded, but the crisis pregnancy center would be able to provide me with all the information I would need.
I wasn't the only one fooled. As Feministing.com explained,
"The scariest thing about this is that the reproductive health community at large has been in the dark about this, with many reproductive rights organizations linking to APA on their websites obviously without knowledge of its history, including the popular Medline Plus, which is a project of the National Library of Medicine."
Even the folks at Our Bodies, Ourselves got busted with a link (since removed.)
If you are opposed to abortion, say so. Explain why. Argue your case convincingly. But don't use scare tactics on people in difficult situations. It lacks integrity. You know better.
Special thanks to RH Reality Check for digging up the information.
[Editor’s note: References by APA linking abortion with future fertility are curious given the presence of some individuals on the APA’s Medical Advisory Board (notably Alan DeCherney, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Fertility & Sterility, the journal of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and Diane Clapp, BSN RN, Medical Information Director for Resolve.) Additionally, it’s disheartening to see that the APA’s searchable database (listed throughout related pages with the text "find an infertility specialist" http://americanpregnancy.org/members/infertility specialists) is seriously lacking in listings. Ad-based listings are unexpected by readers of websites that present themselves as client-centered organizations rather than profit-focused businesses. ~TM]
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