By Michael Bielawski
Vermont’s Attorney General Charity Clark has joined 15 other state attorney generals in signing a letter severely criticizing crisis pregnancy centers that provide women reproductive services but not abortions.
According to the letter, by not offering abortions these centers are not “full-scope reproductive healthcare.”
“CPCs do not provide full-scope reproductive healthcare and often use deceptive tactics to lure in patients seeking reproductive healthcare,” the letter states. “These tactics can have dire health consequences and rob patients of their healthcare choices.”
It suggests that these centers by not offering abortions barely count as healthcare at all.
“Accordingly, CPCs are, by their very nature, limited reproductive healthcare facilities—to the extent they provide healthcare services at all,” it states.
CPCs don’t support abortions out of principle and the organizations openly state that they do not recommend or offer referrals for abortions. The letter nonetheless expresses frustration that they don’t send patients their way.
“CPCs also generally will not even refer for abortion services. Referrals are ‘often used in medical care to ensure patients have access to specialty care as needed.’ Providing referrals for necessary healthcare when the provider will not, or is not able to, provide that care is a crucial part of the standard of care.”
The letter claims that for CPCs to inform women that abortions can lead to depression or infertility is deceptive.
“CPCs provide ‘misleading information’ connecting abortions to, inter alia, infertility, breast cancer, and mental illness, claiming ‘that abortion directly results in a fictitious condition called either ‘post-abortion syndrome’ or ‘post-abortion stress’’ as well as ‘grief and regret.’”
Response by Vermont Right To Life
Mary Beerworth of Vermont Right to Life spoke with VDC on Thursday to respond to some of these assertions. First, she disputed any notion that the public is driving this anti-CPC sentiment.
“They’ve had zero complaints against how they do their support women,” she said. “This is a flat-out attack on the pregnancy centers.”
She noted that to Planned Parenthood, CPCs are unwanted competition.
“It was an obvious threat to their business to have a successfully operating pregnancy resource centers across the state offering women alternatives to abortion which they do not offer,” she said.
She also responded to the notion that CPCs don’t have enough professional medical care on hand.
“If anyone should be regulated more closely it’s Planned Parenthood, they [the CPCs] have in each center except one out of the seven centers in Vermont, one center is not offering any medical services, those that offer ultrasounds have medical directors overseeing their clinics.
She said neither Planned Parenthood Center nor CPCs are licensed by the state. She explained that the personnel at the CPCs have medical licenses and therefore they are held to a high standard because they need to keep those licenses.
“It would be their licenses that would be revoked if they were not doing as they should,” she said. “So Planned Parenthood in their testimonies make a big deal about how they [CPCs] are not licensed, well they are not licensed either. It’s their medical personnel that are licensed and they don’t even have doctors on the premises.”
She also disputed the notion that abortions have little or no consequences in terms of impact on a woman’s health, mental health, and/or ability to have a baby in the future. She shared one story about a Vermont pregnancy center that serviced a woman who ultimately chose to have an abortion.
When the center followed up with the woman to see how she was doing, they discovered that she was in serious trouble.
“They did a follow-up call with her to find out after her appointment and she was actually suicidal. They called just in time. She said ‘You told me it could be bad, it was way worse than anything I could imagine.’
“And she said that she had really felt like killing herself. They had her come right in, they supported her, they counseled her, and that’s how they run. They are not judgemental, they do not pretend that they do abortions. No one comes in by mistake.”
National coverage of the letter can be read at other news outlets.
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle