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PAUL SUTTER
Thursday,
March 24
at 5pm
Cine
FREE!
Environmental
Historian, Author
and Professor
University of Colorado,
Boulder
“Let Us Now Praise
Famous Gullies:
Providence Canyon and
the Soils of the South”
flagpole
11 UNIVERSITY OF
GEORGIA PRESS
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False Choices
GEORGIA LAWMAKERS CHOOSE IDEOLOGY OVER WOMEN’S HEALTH
by Prosper Hedges news@flagpole.com
Athens Pregnancy Center is a crisis preg
nancy center, or a non-medical facility that
discourages abortion. Seeking to counsel
patients out of having the procedure, CPCs
may falsely advertise abortion referral
services or imply neutral, nonjudgmental
advice in their marketing.
On Mar. 11, the Georgia House of
Representatives passed Senate Bill 308,
allocating up to $2 million in taxpayer fund
ing to CPCs. Republican lawmakers have
been explicit in their goals for the funding.
“Our party has been a party pushing for
decreased access to abortion facilities and
has so stressed the need not to have abor
tions,” House Health and Human Services
Committee Chairwoman Sharon Cooper
(R-Marietta) told Atlanta NPR station
WABE.
Diana (Flagpole agreed not to print her
real name to protect her privacy) visited
Athens Pregnancy Center in 2013 after see
ing a sign advertising free pregnancy tests
and ultrasounds. She
already knew she was
pregnant— she’d
taken a test at the
health department.
“I was pregnant and
needed an ultra
sound, because I had
read that sometimes
a pregnancy isn’t
viable,” she says.
“This was a common
complication in my
family, and I had been
told to never have a
child, so I was really
concerned.” She was
uninsured and did
not know yet whether
she qualified for a Medicaid program for
pregnant women.
When Diana called APC, they told her
she would need to come in, take a test and
speak with a counselor. “It got weirdly reli
gious. The interviewer never directly asked
me my religious affiliation. She told me that
she was a Christian. I was polite when she
mentioned it because I was sort of stunned.
I didn’t know this was a religious place.”
The counselor at APC asked Diana if
she had a birth plan, so Diana shared her
concerns about the viability of the fetus.
“She sort of chuckled and said not to worry.
I wanted to make sure that, if it wasn’t
viable, I could still end the pregnancy. She
started to get visibly agitated because any
time our conversation turned toward reli
gion, I shut it down.”
This is the danger of crisis pregnancy
centers: Their focus on abortion preven
tion endangers those who may medically
require the procedure. CPCs do not have the
capacity to diagnose complications, though
their names (e.g. Athens Pregnancy Center)
might indicate otherwise.
“The main crux of the problem is that
CPCs project themselves to be comprehen
sive women’s health care centers, and of
course they’re not,” OBGYN and fellow of
Physicians for Reproductive Health Serina
Floyd told the Guardian.
Diana came in for an ultrasound a week
later. “I invited my husband to come and
when they saw him they were extremely
happy. They didn’t expect us to be mar
ried or that, if everything checked out, we
[would be] down to keep the baby. It was as
though our ‘counselor’ was relieved that she
didn’t have to convince us.”
Fortunately, Diana had a healthy preg
nancy. She did not visit the doctors rec
ommended by APC and instead made an
appointment with a midwifery practice.
“They printed out at least 12 pictures of
my ultrasound. In a couple they typed in
‘Hi Mommy,”’ she says. “I felt like my insis
tence that I find out the viability was pooh-
poohed. They didn’t do anything to calm
my fears, just push their agenda by showing
me pamphlets about adoption or keeping
the baby. I’m a grown woman with a college
education, and I was completely freaked out
and misinformed about pregnancy.”
In a year rife with attacks on the
legitimacy and funding of actual medical
facilities like Planned Parenthood, CPCs
are benefitting at the expense of women’s
health. Five rural hospitals in Georgia have
closed, and others no longer offer OBGYN
services. Athens does not need more money
for billboards of weeping women and the
answerless question: “Scared?” What we
need is a Planned Parenthood.
“I can’t imagine being a young woman
and going into a place like that unguarded,”
Diana says. “It would be very easy to steer
young women toward a destiny they weren’t
sure they wanted.”
Georgia lawmakers do a great disservice
to their constituency in allocating millions
to religious groups instead of true women’s
health centers that could prevent unwanted
pregnancy and save lives. According to
the National Network of Abortion Funds,
many CPCs spend four times more on ter
rifying marketing campaigns than client
services. CPCs are not equipped to offer
anything more than sonograms, bias and
deception. The Magnolia Fund and Access
Reproductive Health Care Southeast offer
free, confidential support online and over
the phone. Planned Parenthood offers con
traceptives, sex education, STD testing and,
yes, abortion. It’s legal, y’all. ©
8 FLAGPOLE.COM • MARCH 23, 2016