Fake Clinics

What magnificent timing.

The good folks at Planned Parenthood (you know, the ones who provide basic health care to millions of women because neither our medical system or our government gives enough of a fuck to do it?) sent me an email the other day, asking me if I'd be kind enough to blog about the latest insult to women's reproductive freedom. Aw, fuck that--it's an insult to decency, ethics, and respect for women's intelligence and self-determination.

And then yesterday I find that the irreplaceable Amanda has a piece on this very scam up at Alternet [Go take a look at it--looks like someone's moving up in the world...]. Which moves me to honor my promise to PP to blog about issues they point out. So here goes.

This is the deal--folks (often with government funding--the very funding that's being slashed so that Planned Parenthood can't provide the things like contraception, prenatal care, pap smears, and sex-ed, which make up the bulk of their business) are setting up "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" which pass themselves off as clinics where women can reasonably expect to get medical care and advice.

But of course, they're not. If you want the whole gory story, go read Amanda's piece, or the Planned Parenthood material. But the crux is that it's no longer enough to offer women an alternative to abortion--now they want to catch women at an extremely vulnerable point in their lives, trick them into exposing themselves to evagelism, and under the pretense of offering medical care and counseling, browbeat, shame, misinform and frighten them into changing their mind about terminating the pregnancy:

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called "crisis pregnancy center" ...designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment...When she arrived for her appointment...the police were there. The "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace....They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion. [Emphasis mine]

Now, if that doesn't violate every medical ethic known to the profession, I don't know what does. Oh, but I forgot--these folks aren't medical professionals--they just play them on TV. No, the closest thing they've got to a professional care provider is a "sonographer" (whose job it is to show the woman in question a misleading "snapshot" of the tissues in question). Even their "counselors" are volunteers:

[A]s a general rule, these pseudo-clinics have few or no paid employees, no medical personnel on staff and no real facilities to provide any medical care. Generally speaking, the medical treatment provided by the largely volunteer staff is nothing more than handing clients a pregnancy test that could be purchased over the counter for $10.

So this is my analogy: You walk out of the cool, antisceptic glow of your doctor's office into the bright sunlight of a Texas afternoon, still trying to wrap your head around the fact that the word "cancer" is now a defining term in your life. You get home, still numb from shock, and find a "Cancer Care Clinic" in the phone book that's conveniently close to your house. You call, and they promise to help you explore all your medical options.

But when you get there, what you find is a roomful of Christian Scientists who try to browbeat, shame, misinform and frighten you into changing your mind about medically treating the cancer. At a point when you may be re-negotiating your relationship with the Divine, they tell you that you're a depraved sinner who's going to burn in hell for eternity if you get chemotherapy.*

Now, would anyone have any sympathy for that kind of medical abuse?

I didn't think so. So here's what to do: go to Planned Parenthood and support the bill that has just been introduced in congress to stop this predatory bullshit.

The Religious Right has declared open season on medical ethics in general, as long as it suits their anti-women-having-control-of-their-own-uteri-and-vaginas platforms. Let's not let them get away with this one, OK?


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*disclaimer--I don't know dick about Christian Scientists. It's just a convenient analogy. I don't know if they even evangelize. If you're CS and would like to respond, please do. No offense intended.