MD officials consulted NARAL in effort to shut down pregnancy centers
by Kelli
Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request have revealed that Maryland government officials and activists with the state chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice America have been working closely together on a legal effort to shut down a local pro-life pregnancy care center.
The emails have also revealed a seven-part plan developed by NARAL to shut down pro-life pregnancy care centers that could indicate a nationwide strategy….
The emails obtained… reveal that, unbeknownst to the public, Montgomery County dropped the case after conferring with NARAL. The county stopped defending the law the month after NARAL recommended that very action in a March 14, 2014 letter, sent a week after the judge permanently blocked the law.
“It is our hope that the Montgomery County Council (Council) will once again partner with us to ensure Montgomery Council citizens are aware of the misleading tactics used by crisis pregnancy centers,” Maryland’s NARAL chapter president, Jodi Finkelstein, wrote….
In the letter, sent by the county to LifeSiteNews along with other emails through a Freedom of Information Act request, Finkelstein “strongly” recommended that the county drop the case and implement seven other strategies.
Those strategies include:
- Prosecuting volunteers and employees of pregnancy care centers for “consumer protection violations”
- Forbidding [PRCs] from “participating in advertising” that county officials deem “untrue or misleading”
- Allowing women who claim they were “harmed by limited-service pregnancy centers to collect monetary damages” from women’s centers
- Denying taxpayer funding to crisis pregnancy centers
- Instructing county officials not to refer women to CPCs for ultrasounds or to “very clearly differentiate the centers from legitimate medical providers”
- Having the county undertake a “public awareness campaign” against pregnancy centers…
- The regulation of ultrasound practices.
“We are pleased to offer our continued assistance in any way as you move forward,” Finkelstein writes.
~ Dustin Siggins, Life Site News, January 13
PDFs of email exchanges here.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
“Prosecuting volunteers and employees of pregnancy care centers for ‘consumer protection violations.'” Let that sink in for a moment, trying to make it criminal to try to convince someone to take a different court of action. And ironically all PRC services are free, while it’s the abortion clinics that profit as merchants of death. Orwellian barbarism, that’s what this is right here, making virtue a crime.
Imagine if the beer and liquor industry colluded with politicians to shut down Alcoholics Anonymous meetings…. for offering an “untrue and misleading” message.
“Allowing women who claim they were “harmed by limited-service pregnancy centers to collect monetary damages” from women’s centers”
It would be really interesting to see what kind of “harm” any of these women would claim to have suffered. I suppose it might be traumatic to have to walk down the street after discovering that the facility you are at does not perform abortions.
Even from a neutral abortion stance this is bogus.
– Abortion clinics are also limited-service. If a person can sue a crisis pregnancy Center for discouraging abortion then abortion clinics should be held responsible for not telling women about adoption. I think the many women who regret their decisions to abort would benefit from some Planned Parenthood money
– If you want an abortion, logically, where do you go? An abortion clinic. I agree that any place offering counselling shouldn’t be allowed to use inaccurate facts or anything untrue. But aside from that reasonable request, CPCs are really just where you go when you want to have a baby but might not have perfect circumstances.
“I agree that any place offering counseling shouldn’t be allowed to use inaccurate facts or anything untrue.” The problem with this sort of thing is what is true, what is bias, and can you tell the difference? When the National Cancer Institute declares abortion and breast cancer are unrelated in an official policy statement, but go on to author studies that accept such a relationship, why should we clap a pregnancy center worker in irons for agreeing with a study but not with their political statement? I know what you mean, and honesty is always the best policy, but think about how your comment there plays out with a media and academic complex that is not independent in any sense of the word. Food for thought!
Imagine if the beer and liquor industry colluded with politicians to shut down Alcoholics Anonymous meetings…. for offering an “untrue and misleading” message. – well if AA were doing so it would be justified.
It would be really interesting to see what kind of “harm” any of these women would claim to have suffered. – being given incorrect length of pregnancy, being told of impacts of abortion which are false. That sort of thing.
Given the amount of time and effort so many anti-choice groups have put into conspiring with so many conservative politicians to introduce TRAP laws and use false information to draft other laws impeding access to abortion, complaining about this is a joke.
this is a joke. — Haha!