The Big Lie

by: Tom Neven, January, 2002, issue of Focus on the Family magazine.

When it comes to the fight for pro-family and pro-life policies in the public arena, never underestimate the chutzpah of the anti-family forces. The latest example comes in a slickly produced booklet titled "Unmasking Fake Clinics" whose self-declared aim is to "help alleviate some of the problems caused by CPCs."

The National Abortion Rights Action League, better known as NARAL, produces the booklet, which charges crisis pregnancy centers with deceptive practices, allegedly luring women through their doors under false pretenses.

It calls CPCs the "provider arm" of the "anti-choice movement," and it accuses them of pretending to be medical clinics without trained medical professionals, this from an organization that has fought attempts in several states to bring abortion clinics up to the same medical standards of veterinary clinics.

NARAL's booklet cites "anecdotal evidence" that CPCs even discriminate on the basis of race, this from an organization whose patron saint, Margaret Sanger, advocated birth control and abortion to restrain the population growth of so-called inferior races. The booklet, also called a "choice action kit," is designed to give pro-abortion advocates advice on how to mount a campaign to close CPCs. (The beginning of the booklet is careful, however, to disclaim "any liability for loss incurred as a consequence of the use of any materials in this book.") It provides proposed letters to newspaper editors and to local medical officials.

In the chapter "The Case Against CPCs," it features items called "Fake Clinics . . . In Their Own Words," quoting largely unnamed sources for allegedly using deceptive information provided by CPCs. Here are two examples of so-called misleading information:

"[CareNet crisis pregnancy centers are] committed to creating an awareness within the local community . . . of the fact that abortion only compounds human need rather than resolving it." *CareNet Information packet For Developing a CareNet Pregnancy Center Ministry

"I'll give you lots of information about why you shouldn't have an abortion. First of all, and probably the most important, is that you will never forget it your whole life. . . . You don't want to do something that is going to ruin your fertility and your ability to have a family later on. And so many times . . . women can have an infection, which can cause you to become sterile." *CPC "Counselor," Flint, MI (Feb. 2000).
[Editor's note: Deletions or changes to text are part of the NARAL booklet.]

If NARAL considers these statements to be false or misleading, it better rethink who is misleading whom when it comes to giving out complete information about abortion.

The booklet also provides advice on how to investigate CPCs, including information designed to deceive CPC staff by posing as pregnant women or college students who think they might be pregnant. And as another part of its deceptive investigations, are you picking up a trend here, the booklet tells readers to try to catch a CPC at racial discrimination by sending three "couples" for counseling: one in which both the woman and her partner are Caucasian, one in which they are of two different races, and another couple "of color."

Duping the public
The real danger of NARAL's campaign comes in the subtlety of its propaganda, at least in the eyes of a reader not familiar with the issues, and the lengths it will go to spread it.

For example, the Conejo Valley Women's Resource Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., was targeted by a nurse practitioner named Wendy Davidson, who provides "family-planning services" in the area. She wrote a letter to the Thousand Oaks Star in which she accuses the center of being deceptive because it provides no birth-control information or referrals. (Never mind the screwy logic of offering birth-control information to a pregnant woman.)

As Sally Rosiek, the executive director of the center, points out, "We have never claimed to be a family-planning clinic, nor are we listed in any directory under any category for birth control or family-planning providers. We are listed as an 'abortion alternative' or 'pregnancy counseling' center, in keeping with our stated purpose to support women already pregnant."

Davidson's letter to the newspaper is almost a point-for-point recital of the suggested charges contained in the NARAL booklet. For example, taking a cue directly from NARAL, Davidson wrote, "Sadly, it is the medically underserved population?poor or uneducated women?who suffer from this the most." She also claims that the Conejo Valley Center is not a medical facility, even though it is in fact licensed as such by the state of California.

Someone in the Thousand Oaks area has also been leaving flyers in restaurant restrooms warning against "deceptive" CPCs and names the Conejo Valley Women's Resource Center and the Life Centers of Ventura, Simi and Camarillo, Calif., on the flyer. It also provides an e-mail address for readers to report an "experience at a fake clinic."

Why now?
Rosiek of the Conejo Valley Center said that NARAL and other pro-abortion forces had generally ignored CPCs in the past. "They did not see us as a threat, mainly because they had a friend in the White House," she said.

"This is no longer the case. President Bush has publicly shared his pro-life stance and his support for crisis pregnancy and women's resource centers." And she adds, "The good news is, as it says in Romans 8:31, 'What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?' We must be doing something right or the enemy wouldn't be trying so hard to stop us."