Tom Maguire @ JustOneMinute:
The NY Times delivers a takes a blast at pregnancy centers, which offer an alternative to the Times vision of abortions for all. Sadly, they can’t (or don’t want to) quote a single prominent liberal in favor of this implementation of “safe, legal and rare”:
Pregnancy Centers Gain Influence in Anti-Abortion Arena
By PAM BELLUCK
WACO, Tex. — With free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, along with diapers, parenting classes and even temporary housing, pregnancy centers are playing an increasingly influential role in the anti-abortion movement. While most attention has focused on scores of new state laws restricting abortion, the centers have been growing in numbers and gaining state financing and support.
Largely run by conservative Christians, the centers say they offer what Roland Warren, head of Care Net, one of the largest pregnancy center organizations, described as “a compassionate approach to this issue.”
As they expand, they are adding on-call or on-site medical personnel and employing sophisticated strategies to attract women, including Internet search optimization and mobile units near Planned Parenthood clinics.
Internet search optimization? What’s next, using Hollywood doctors in ads? Ooops.
The story is totally one-sided in its finding of flaws. For example:
Abortion rights advocates have long called some of their approaches deceptive or manipulative. Medical and other experts say some dispense scientifically flawed information, exaggerating abortion’s risks.
Jean Schroedel, a Claremont Graduate University politics professor, said that “there are some positive aspects” to centers, but that “things pregnant women are told at many of these centers, some of it is really factually suspect.”
I suspect that somewhere a pro-life advocate has criticized abortion providers for presenting slanted information. That suspicion is not addressed by the Times. However, if we flash back to an Emily Bazelon contribution to the Times from 2010, we learn that abortion providers are embattled victims of the pro-life movement who are fighting back heroically. A bit of flavor:
In many ways, the clinics were a rebel-sister success story. Instead of a sterile and expensive hospital operating room, patients could go to a low-cost clinic with pastel walls and sympathetic staff members. At a Planned Parenthood I visited recently in Rochester, while women were having abortions, they could look at photos of a Caribbean beach, taped above them on the ceiling.
Nearly heaven!
And here is a Times classic: