There are more than 140 centers throughout Ohio that offer services to help women who are dealing with unintended pregnancies. Advocates for abortion rights say these centers offer suspect medical services, and say they have a study that proves it. The centers are often called crisis pregnancy centers. These mostly non-profit organizations plaster ads all over college campuses and areas where there could be a high number of women who unexpectedly find themselves pregnant. Jamie Miracle of NARAL Ohio says a new study by her group shows these centers are not offering medical help.
What we found was a pattern medically inaccurate information, coercion and scare tactics to force a woman to make a decision that these centers want the woman to make which is to give the child up for adoption or to parent the child and not to make the decision to have an abortion.
Miracle says the centers often use fear tactics, telling women that abortions carry more physical risks than they actually do. "47 percent gave misleading information on the mental health issues like suicide, depression and substance abuse, and abortion. Thatâs been proven inaccurate by medical research. The American Psychological Association (and) all of the big names (in research) have shown thereâs no link between suicide, depression or substance abuse following and abortion." And Miracle says thereâs something these centers donât provide: Comprehensive birth control options. She says advocates of these facilities often try to make people think they provide legitimate medical services when they don't. "Do you want to roll the dcie in the doctors office where half of the time heâs going to give you medically inaccurate information rather than the medical information you need before you decide what kind of medical care you get," Miracle says. "These are places people go to get sound medical information and they are getting the exact opposite of that.
Itâs another attempt by a shrinking abortion industry to maintain some level of market share for abortions.
Mike Gonadakis is president of Ohio Right to Life. He says the NARAL study is inaccurate, and pregnancy centers provide women with unexpected pregnancies with real help.
Women, regardless of color, political persuasions, walk into their facilities day in and day out , whether that be prenatal care, ultrasounds but more importantly, it provides access to food, formula, parenting classes, baby clothes. "These are one-stop shops for young women. Sometimes they come with their boyfriends and sometimes they donât, to get real-life help and more and more women are choosing pregnancy centers over planned parenthood." Gonadakis admits not all centers provide comprehensive birth control options but he says they arenât set up to do that anyway. "Thereâs no mandate that they have to do so at all," Gonadakis says. "Most of them are 501C3 non profit and they perform the mission they were set up to do. They donât receive any Medicaid dollars or anything to that affect so itâs not applicable." But Gonadakis says there is a push afoot to get some government health care dollars directed into these crisis pregnancy centers in the future. And thatâs worries abortion rights advocates like Miracle. Miracle says her group will fight any attempt to try to channel taxpayer money into these centers in the future.
