Planned Parenthood launched a campaign against crisis pregnancy centers, which offer pregnant mothers with financial and medical assistance calling the nonprofit entities “fake” and “dangerous.”

The abortion conglomerate defined crisis pregnancy centers in one social media post as  as “dangerous” organizations with a “hidden agenda to lure in and then pressure pregnant people into not having an abortion.”
 

The tweet also links to a post on the Planned Parenthood website entitled “So-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’” written by the entity’s Clergy Advocacy Board. The article denounces pregnancy centers as biased and misleading to women seeking pregnancy care options, contending that pregnancy centers disguise their affiliation with politicized religious organizations.

The post additionally claims that pregnancy centers refuse to refer women to healthcare providers and leverage scare tactics to dissuade women from choosing abortion.

“As clergy that counsel women around all of their pregnancy options, we know that interfering with a woman’s decision about whether to continue a pregnancy denies her right to self-determination and undervalues her moral agency,” the article asserted.

The allegations against pregnancy centers have long been a tactic of Planned Parenthood to oppose care options that don’t include abortion. And pregnancy centers, which sometimes refer to themselves as pregnancy medical clinics or PMCs, have been fighting back to continue offering women many services such as:

• STI testing and treatment
• Pregnancy testing 
• Ultrasounds
• Prenatal care for those without health insurance
• Assistance obtaining insurance
• Childcare, housing, and transportation
• Career planning and resume assistance

Ginna Cross, a co-executive director of Alliance Family Services in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a registered nurse and a diagnostic medical sonographer. She’s been involved in pregnancy center ministry for five years.

“If Planned Parenthood was truly ‘pro-choice,’ they would welcome having a place women can go that supports women who want an option other than abortion,” Cross said in an interview with The Sentinel. “But since Planned Parenthood is clearly pro-abortion, they have to lie about and vilify these free medical clinics and resource centers.”

Indeed, Planned Parenthood’s own social media post made the case that attempting to “pressure pregnant people into not having an abortion” is dangerous.

“If a woman decides to have an abortion she is welcome to come back to us for post-abortive medical care and support,” Cross said regarding allegations that pregnancy centers refuse to help women who choose abortion.

“It is a lie that the services and support provided by PMCs are unsolicited," Cross stated in response to the accusation that PMCs force ultrasounds on patients.

Centers like Alliance Family Services do not hide their religious affiliations. The organization has a statement of faith displayed on their website and a mission statement that says the clinic is committed to serving women and “allowing God to minister to their hearts and minds.”

Regarding the accusation of disguised political and religious affiliations, many pro-life advocates openly support and even volunteer at pregnancy centers. Planned Parenthood meanwhile spends considerable funds on pro-abortion legislative efforts.

“Planned Parenthood has a clear financial interest in making sure women choose abortion,” Cross noted, observing that the entity receives “money for performing abortions and an unfathomable amount of federal money.”

Planned Parenthood PAC donated more than $670,000 to pro-abortion Democrats in the 2022 election cycle and provided no contributions to pro-life Republicans, according to federal election data compiled by Open Secrets.

Planned Parenthood, for instance, spent $5 million on North Carolina’s midterm battleground races, according to a report from the Associated Press, marking part of a $50 million effort to uphold abortion laws in nine battleground states. These “reproductive rights” that Planned Parenthood wants to preserve are almost exclusively abortions, since pregnancy centers provide many of the other non-abortion services that Planned Parenthood offers.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and other lawmakers have also been lobbying for bills that would “crackdown” on pregnancy centers and force them to promote abortion to patients. “An extremist Supreme Court and radical right-wing politicians have made clear they see women as second-class citizens,” Warren said in a Senate floor speech last summer.

Warren also claimed that pregnancy centers “lure” women by falsely advertising healthcare and reproductive services. Warren asserted that these clinics deceive women and don’t have doctors and nurses.

The lawmaker cited several statistics to support her claims, saying that 84% of pregnancy centers had no physician and 75% had no registered nurse. Many of the clinics who would contest the assertions of Warren and Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, do have clinical staff.

Heidi Matzke, the executive director of the Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Sacramento, California, said in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year that “all medical services are provided by a staff of licensed medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners and medical assistants.”

She added that most of the medical staff at her clinic have first-hand abortion experience. “Our OBGYN doctor was an abortionist,” she noted.

Many pregnancy center officials argue that abortion clinics are the real perpetrators of misinformation. They assert that pregnancy centers give expectant mothers the opportunity for ultrasounds in order to have more complete information before making a decision for abortion. Cross said that Planned Parenthood tells any uncertain woman that “her situation is too difficult and she should abort.”

Some studies show that a substantial share of mothers willing to consider choosing life do so after seeing an ultrasound of their baby. And Republicans proposed legislation two years ago that would require healthcare providers to conduct an ultrasound before performing an abortion.

However, Democrats are still fighting. Warren, along with several other Senate Democrats, introduced a bill in April which would fine pregnancy centers that do not provide abortion information. Pro-life advocates say the proposed statute is a free speech violation.

Politicians like Warren say pregnancy centers want the government to dictate “whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.” But the pro-life viewpoint holds that a preborn baby is a human life.

“PCMs agree with the irrefutable scientific consensus that human life begins at conception,” Cross affirmed. “We seek to protect all human life, both the life in the womb and the woman who is carrying that child.”