Disturbing article on crisis pregnancy centers

[Nevilledog]

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Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC
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The executive director of a new TX crisis pregnancy center proclaims that "a lot of 13-year-olds do phenomenal" as mothers. She also believes that the 10-year-old rape victim should not have gotten an abortion: "even at 10, she knows a life is inside her." https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/pregnancy-center-of-the-coastal-bend-expansion/…
Pinson welcomes even the most devastating cases.

“I’ve seen a lot of 13-year-olds do phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a negative thing.”

She closely followed the case of the 10-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion in Ohio last month. If that girl came into her center, Pinson would suggest she consider adoption, she said, adding that abortion would not fix the girl’s problems.

“That life is still a life and, even at 10, she knows a life is inside her.”
7:40 AM · Aug 1, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/31/pregnancy-center-of-the-coastal-bend-expansion/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/wiuw8

CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. — Jana Pinson leaned over the table at the architect’s office, craning for a better look at the textures and patterns that would bring her post-Roe dreams to life.

At a meeting in mid-July, three weeks after the Supreme Court retracted the constitutional right to abortion, Pinson was plotting a new-age makeover for her crisis pregnancy center, an organization designed to persuade people to carry their pregnancies to term. She ran her fingers across samples of porcelain tile and beechwood-stained cabinets. The walls of her new building would be varying shades of green and gray, splashed with abstract pictures of trees, each detail designed to evoke, as she’d requested, the feeling of a “coastal spa.”

The executive director of the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend had recently overseen the purchase of what she sees as the most “strategic” plot of land in Corpus Christi, a city of 300,000 people on the South Texas coast. Right next to the local Texas A&M campus, looking out over the Oso Bay, Pinson’s $10 million crisis pregnancy center will be built to attract female undergraduates, with a coffee shop and a thrift store visible from the road, and a patio where students can sip their caffè lattes.

Chuck Anastos, the architect, gestured to the blueprint for the 20,000-square-foot facility. When it opens in February 2024, he said, the pregnancy center would be the “hip place for people to come.”

Over the past 50 years of legal abortion in America, crisis pregnancy centers have been one of the top tools of the antiabortion movement, and a target for intense criticism from abortion rights advocates. With more than 2,500 locations across the United States, these centers deploy what critics decry as overly aggressive — even deceptive — tactics to talk women out of abortions. Often religiously affiliated, they typically offer free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, sometimes initially presenting themselves as abortion clinics or objective sources of “abortion information.”

*snip*


I find everything about this article disturbing.

[ck4829]

1. The kids in Uvalde were alive too

[Xoan]

2. ...

[2naSalit]

3. This is why churches have to be regulated and taxed.

They cannot be trusted with the human rights of others and should be regulated like any other industry.

[csziggy]

11. After all the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

So shouldn't laws giving them an exemption from normal regulations be illegal?

Treat them as the law treat any other non-profit organization, but only so far as their non-profit and non-political activities go.

[equite]

4. simple first amendment

Separation of church and state. Says it all. Why keep re-addressing our constitution as nd it's meaning is crazy. Tired of being scared.

[Grins]

5. A 10-year old girl doesn't know ANYTHING!

…you horrid puss-filled wart on the ass of the world!

[Norbert]

10. So how will a 10 year old find work to support the child.

I am almost afraid to ask that question .

[yellowdogintexas]

13. this is assuming she survives the pregnancy at all

that is a high risk situation a disaster waiting to happen.

I hate these people.


Going back say 12 years ago, a speaker at my Sunday School class apologized for his wife's absence. She is a nursing professor OB/GYN) at a local university, and was on clinical training the day before and was too depressed to be around us because she had delivered a 10 yr old. So this baby having a baby thing is not a new thing (at least here) . Since we know these baby girls are not going around being temptresses looking for sex, it stands to reason she was raped.

I have heard that gang members will assault these young girls because they know they are "clean" as in no STDs.

Another friend is retired now but was the Director of the Rape Crisis Center here. She has enough horror stories for a book, but this is her worst one. In fact it was one of the many background stories used by Wendy Davis in her famous filibuster.

A mother brought in her 12 yr old daughter; she had come home from work early and caught her husband in the act of raping the girl. Turns out this had been going on for some time, and the girl was 4 months pregnant - she had never had a period. At the time it was still possible to get an abortion under 16 weeks gestation.

[Diamond_Dog]

6. This seems so creepy

Like these women are recruiting cult members, funded by state money, and with zero oversight. You get “points” for attending Bible study classes that you can redeem for diapers? Thirteen year olds make “phenomenal “ mothers? I feel sick to my stomach.

[musette_sf]

7. Gestational Slavery Concentration Camp

Just call it what it is.

[enough]

8. A truly atavistic view of girls, harking back to child brides.

Fetishizing child rape victims is surely a first step in that direction.

[2naSalit]

17. +1

[Retrograde]

9. What - you're heart wasn't warmed

by the mention of how this "pregnancy center" will have a latte bar so it will become the new hip hangout in town? Or the man cave, where certified marriage counselors will approach young men (and do what? the article doesn't say)? Or the bible study classes where expectant mothers can earn points redeemable for diapers? Or the kayak launch, where "women [can] spend an afternoon of reflection looking out at the bay"? And all this at the low, low cost of several hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars!

What would women in Texas do without such a thoughtful, caring person to look after them?

[Wild blueberry]

12. Two questions

1) Who's paying the $10 million to build this thing?

2) Are they offering each young woman at least $25,00 per year for at least 18 years to raise a kid?

OK, a third question: who are these pregnancy centers grifting?

[Lonestarblue]

16. The taxpayers of Texas are paying for this "Christian" grift.

I need a better word than grift for what these people do. They’re monsters!

Facts:
—Texas refuses to expand Medicaid under the ACA, thus having the largest number of uninsured citizens in the country. Poor women thus rely on women’s health centers like Planned Parenthood.
—A few years ago, the Republican legislature cut the budget for women’s health clinics (the ones that actually provide medical care) so drastically that 81 clinics were forced to close, most of them in rural areas with no other healthcare services for poor women—all to try to force Planned Parenthood out of the state.
—At the same time, the legislature granted $5 million to a Christian organization to start a women’s healthcare operation—never materialized, money down the drain.
—The Texas legislature then approved $100 million for crisis pregnancy centers that offer no real healthcare and are not medically licensed. They are run to lie to women about abortion (it causes cancer and infertility and all women regret it) and to make false promises about how they and their baby will be cared for. They can do a pregnancy test, which they then lie about by telling a woman, for example, that she is 12 weeks into pregnancy instead of 8 so she will believe it’s too late for a medication abortion. They then make surgical abortion sound like a dangerous, major operation with weeks required for recovery.

These crisis pregnancy center are religious organizations funded by taxpayer dollars to pretend they are medical organizations so they can stop women from having abortions. Once they have the woman’s data, such as contact information, address, and state of pregnancy, they will share that data with state agencies. Since they are not medical facilities, they are not subject to HIPAA rules. Staff will also call, harassing women to find out whether they had an abortion. They also falsely advertise “abortion services” to draw unsuspecting women in and some of them have multi-state operations.

I doubt these clinics can be shut down, but we need more from the federal government. The FDA needs to establish and staff an abortion hotline and advertise it everywhere as the safe place to get facts about abortion. A public service ad campaign could also alert women to the tactics of crisis pregnancy centers and warn them to stay away because they do not provide medical care.

Then the FDA needs to makes birth control pills and the morning-after pill over-the-counter products to prevent warped pharmacists from refusing to fill prescriptions. The government also needs to inform women where they can safely access abortion services and order abortion pills. It’s only a matter of time before these fake Christian pregnancy centers create fake abortion pills and set up an operation to mail them to women. They have millions of dollars at their disposal.

And, yes, I’ve sent these suggestions to the FDA—not even an acknowledgment of the email. Since I have two useless Senators and an equally useless Representative, I won’t waste my time contacting them. Anyone reading this who has effective representation, please feel free to share the ideas and ask for the federal government to create a campaign to provide real information to counter all the rot pushed by the Christian right. Indeed, I’d like to see the Biden Administration create a national and well-publicized position for an OB-GYN to serve as a national voice for reproductive rights and information. Sort of like the role Dr. Ashish Jha performs as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator but way more visible.

Finally, some reputable groups needs to do a broadcast expose of these crisis pregnancy centers. The NYT and WaPo have done articles, but few women who need to know to be wary of them are unlikely to read either.

[Wild blueberry]

18. What a thoughtful, useful post

Thank you.
In Wisconsin, we're not quite as hostage to a cruel Death Cult (formerly known as RepubliQan) legislature, only because of our splendid Governor Tony Evers (who we must re-elect Nov. 8), as you are in Texas. Really hope you can make a start with Beto. You've given me inspiration to visit our local "pregnancy center", not merely to ask what actual financial help they will give to women (spoiler alert: zero) but also to find out who funds them and what their medical license is, or more likely isn't. Thank you!

[lees1975]

14. When similar kinds of centers got federal funding during the Clinton and Obama administrations

to do some real good by providing more than just a free ultrasound and counseling to talk the clients out of the abortion, it did some real good and the actual abortion numbers went down because they were helping women with the circumstances that were the root cause of their decision in the first place. Why are Republicans so against actually helping people? How can they say they are really pro-life if they're only willing to criminalize abortion, not provide the kind of help women actually need?

[Mad_Machine76]

15. "hip" place to be?!