In a phone interview with the Straight, Joyce Arthur of the Pro-Choice Action Network said these organizations sometimes present themselves as secular agencies to lure pregnant women, but often have a secret religious agenda to discourage anyone from seeking an abortion or using birth control. Others, she said, will disclose their religious affiliation in fine print, but not in an “up-front” manner.
She also alleged that some crisis pregnancy centres falsely claim that there are links between abortion and breast cancer.
“They’re handing out medical misinformation to women, scaring them and so forth,” Arthur said. “Can they be regulated in some way?”
The Ministry of Health did not make a spokesperson available to respond by the Straight’s deadline. […]
B.C. NDP health critic Judy Darcy told the Straight by phone that she is “very disturbed” about the lack of counselling for pregnant women that offers real choices—”both to consider options, including abortion as a choice, but also counselling post-abortion in a way that is unbiased and that use medically sound information”.
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Faye adds: A comment from a friend: “Interesting tactic. Once you know you’re losing ground and politicians have an irrational fear of even discussing the issue, ask the government to regulate your opponents.”
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Andrea adds: To be fair, a winning strategy down south has been government regulation of clinics, which brings their standards up to those of other outpatient clinics. Clinics operating in subpar conditions are thus forced to close. (Hurray.) We are winning this, but we (broadly speaking, North American pro-lifers) are also asking government to regulate. Is that not fair to say?
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Isn’t the Pro-Choice Action Network defunct? I mean, doesn’t that say something when the journalist doesn’t get the org name right? Not that it really matters, as I suspect it’s just Joyce Arthur, in any case.
There’s no “unbiased” medical information. Abortion advocates like to pretend they are neutral. But they won’t present neutral facts like abortion kills a human being.
That’s why Crisis Pregnancy Centres exist.
Oh. My. Goodness. She just does not stop, does she?
Whatever happened to responsible journalism? You would think, wouldn’t you, that the Straight would investigate some of Joyce Arthur’s claims for themselves, rather than whole-handedly accepting them at face value. Maybe they could have called a couple of CPCs, or visited them, to see for themselves whether or not Joyce Arttur’s claims had any merit. At the very least, adding in the information that Joyce Arthur was sued for defamation by a CPC would have added some balance to this story, don’t ya think? At least, then, the reader would know that Arthur’s claims are disputed.
But, while we are on the topic, let’s talk for a minute about the kind of “unbiased” counselling that goes on in abortion clinics. Here is a link to the list of information and decision-making resources that women are directed to by Women’s Health Options, the abortion clinic in Edmonton. I don’t know about you, but I think that directing a Catholic woman to “Catholics for Choice” for information as to what Catholicism teaches about abortion is highly disrespectful of her faith and the struggle that she is going through. Likewise, referring women to “I’m Not Sorry” and not mentioning sites like “Silent No More” or “afterabortion.com” completely discounts the experience of the (many) women who really struggle after an abortion.
Suzanne is right. The only way to be unbiased on this topic is to not care about it.
Okay. Lesson learned. A person should really read the article in question before commenting on it. The Straight article did include the information about Joyce Arthur being sued. Still think they should have checked in with a couple of CPCs to determine for themselves whether or not Arthur’s claims had merit. Or at least mentioned the press release put out by the CPC who did the suing.
What do you think? Is it time to start raising funds for an appeal?