At abortion facilities, women face aggressive ‘sales pitch’

Though Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities claim to support women’s choices, they generally don’t help women who choose against abortion. Pregnancy resource centers, in contrast, actively help women with alternatives to abortion.

Some of the services offered by pregnancy centers include free sonograms, help finding affordable medical care, counseling and emotional support, maternity clothes, help with housing, diapers, baby items, adoption referrals and sometimes even job training and parenting classes. Pregnancy centers are free, unlike abortion facilities, which charge for their “services.” While they often encourage undecided women to choose life instead of abortions, they also are an excellent resource for women who do not intend to have abortions but need practical help.

Abortion facilities don’t offer the services pregnancy centers do. And when women decide against abortion (despite the aggressive “sales pitch” they often get from abortion workers) abortion facilities very seldom offer help with alternatives.

Many pregnancy centers are located near abortion facilities, and it would seem logical that so-called “pro-choice” abortion workers would send women to those centers if they don’t want abortions — but they don’t, even when the woman wants her baby and clearly needs help.

Pregnant women call Planned Parenthood to hear about their options

In the Feminists for Life publication The American Feminist, Ellen J Reich interviewed former abortion workers about this very thing, writing:

Planned Parenthood workers tend to push abortion when speaking with pregnant women. In a video recorded by And Then There Were None, an organization for abortion workers who have left the industry, former Planned Parenthood manager Sue Thayer says that while speaking to a pregnant woman considering her options, abortion workers would place an envelope on the table:

And Then There Were None also shared the story of abortion worker “Ellen”:

Former Planned Parenthood worker Catherine Adair said that the only “counseling” women received was done after the woman had already paid for the abortion. She says:

While Adair did ask women if they were considering adoption (in obedience of the informed consent law in place at the time), the question was asked offhandedly and only after the woman had paid for the abortion.

So Planned Parenthood did not present a woman with options, nor did they send women elsewhere for help if they wanted to continue the pregnancy.

Former Manager: There’s only one option for pregnant women at Planned Parenthood

Some abortion workers never referred women to pro-life pregnancy centers, perhaps because of rumors and lies workers told among themselves about how awful pro-lifers were. Jewels Green, who worked in a non-Planned Parenthood abortion facility, describes the things fellow workers told her about pro-lifers:

Abortion workers are largely unwilling to have anything to do with pro-life pregnancy centers. But one study shows that the majority of pregnancy center workers would work with abortion facilities if it meant the facilities would refer women who choose life to them. According to researcher Frederica Mathews-Green, when pregnancy center workers were questioned:

And, of course, the things Jewels Green was told about pregnancy centers are untrue. Many women who go to pregnancy centers report being grateful for the help they received.

For example, here are some reviews for First Resort, a crisis pregnancy center in San Francisco, California. The reviews appeared on YELP:

Another review says:

A third says:

One woman on YELP wrote about the differences between First Resort and Planned Parenthood:

Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities promote abortion, and do not offer women support if they choose adoption or parenting. They do not help women with options, other than abortion, or send women to places where they can get help. It is pregnancy centers, not abortion facilities, that go the extra mile to help women who reject abortion.

1. Ellen J Reich “An Insider’s Look into the Abortion Industry” The American Feminist Fall/Winter 2016

2. “Exposing the Industry”Video by And Then There Were None

3. Frederica Mathews-Green Real Choices: Offering Practical, Life-Affirming Alternatives to Abortion (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1994) 16