I’ve biked past the First Way Health Center countless times without realizing its sinister role in the war on reproductive rights. Yet this humble, beige cottage, near the Planned Parenthood on East 17th Avenue and High Street, is one of the 35,000 “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” targeted by the Feminist Majority Foundation’s recent campaign on college campuses nationwide.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers, often located intentionally within the vicinity of college campuses and Planned Parenthood clinics, present themselves as an alternative resource for young women with unplanned pregnancies. The Feminist Majority Foundation, along with the University’s own Students for Choice group, allege that CPCs promote themselves as legitimate health clinics and then manipulate young women into choosing either
parenthood or adoption.
“Women need to know all of the options possible,” said Erin Howe, co-director of Students for Choice on campus. Howe argues that CPCs coerce women by using emotional cues and fear tactics to scare women from seeking abortion.
The First Way Web site, for example, claims that there is “extensive research that links abortion to breast cancer,” while the governmental National Cancer Institute clarifies that there is no evidential connection between the two. First Way also seeks to prevent unwanted pregnancy through abstinence-only education. The site includes a featured article titled “If sex feels so good, why do I feel so bad?” (I read the article, and I still don’t know the answer.)
When I spoke with Terry Ianora, who works with First Way in Eugene, she was open about the organization’s perspective on reproductive rights.
“No woman really wants an abortion,” Ianora said. Her center provides free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, administered by registered nurses, as well as counseling that emphasizes the feasibility of parenthood or adoption.
“We’re not misleading women. We’re just trying to give them all of the possible options,” Ianora said. “We try to let her know that she is capable of carrying a baby.”
Ianora uses language that suggests a lot of the same values touched upon by Howe. Women need to know all of their options. Women should feel empowered to make the best decision, despite what their family or partner pressures them to do.
I don’t think that Ianora is conniving when she uses the same buzzwords usually invoked by pro-choice activists. Maybe I’m naïve, but I didn’t hear creeping oppression in Ianora’s voice.
What I did hear was the misguided notion that CPCs provide a greater breadth of options than university health centers or Planned Parenthood clinics. It’s not that Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide information about adoption or parenthood, but that the organization includes the third option rejected by CPCs. Though the opposing politics behind both approaches to pregnancy counseling are undeniable, a CPC across the street from a Planned Parenthood creates a false ideological polarization, as Planned Parenthood at least provides some semblance of medical care and “options.”
“The goal of Students for Choice is not to get rid of these clinics, but for them to be advertised as what they are,” Howe said.
Another goal of the Feminist Majority Foundation and Students For Choice is to end federal funding for CPCs. It’s hard to determine exactly how much tax-payer money is allotted to pro-life pregnancy counseling centers, but thousands of dollars went to organizations like First Way under the Bush Administration’s abstinence-only grant programs.
Ianora, who doesn’t seem to represent the sort of sinister anti-abortionist portrayed by the Feminist Majority Foundation, has me convinced that there is some place for pregnancy counseling that nurtures a respect for adoption or young parenthood over abortion. But as long as CPCs promote medical beliefs that don’t correlate with actual research, and as long as they fail to accurately educate women on all of their options, that place is not in the federal budget.
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