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Given my family’s personal experiences with “crisis pregnancy” centers I have just about zero patience with this sort of crap, so check out the dirt Jessica Valenti of Feministing has dug up in Virginia.

I’m just shocked that Heartbeat International – the organization that gets the majority of money made from Virginia’s “Choose Life” license plates – is possibly misusing funds. The anti-choice organizations gets $15 from the $25 plates, and distributes the money to crisis pregnancy centers. Or just random anti-choice buddies, it’s become kinda unclear.

One pregnancy center listed by several anti-abortion groups as a certified clinic — the Mattingly Test Center in Loudoun County — is a two-story brick house owned by Linda Mattingly, a former director at Care Net, a Leesburg-based pregnancy network. There are no signs in front indicating it is a clinic, the Internal Revenue Service has no record of it as a 503© nonprofit, and it is not registered as a corporation with the Virginia secretary of state.
A woman who answered the door of the Ashburn house last week said pregnancy services had been, but no longer were, provided there. She did not give her name before closing the door. The Washington Post tried to reach Mattingly by phone, but messages were not returned.

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The report [from NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia] also outlines the standard bullshit that crisis pregnancy centers peddle in: false medical information, non-medically trained staff, and scare tactics like telling women they could become a “crack whore in prison” if they get an abortion.

Read the quote in context here.

I think I’ve said this before in the context of abstinence-only “education” but it sort of stands to reason that organizations that know bloody well they’re providing no honest, legitimate, meaningful pregnancy crisis services would tend not to take their “responsibility” to provide those non-services very seriously.

Especially since anyone inside the anti-choice noise machine who demanded accountability for funds received from automatic government funding would just be inviting scrutiny of any non-services they themselves might be getting paid to provide.

Via Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors, here’s another chance for me to play Crankypants about the idea that the only possible, conceivable option for single pregnant women is — whether by abortion or adoption — to get it over with as quickly as possible so you won’t ruin your chance to be dependent on a man.

Crawford quotes New York Times

[E]ach year, social pressure drives thousands of unmarried women to choose between abortion, which is illegal but rampant, and adoption, which is considered socially shameful but is encouraged by the government. The few women who decide to raise a child alone risk a life of poverty and disgrace.

Nearly 90 percent of the 1,250 South Korean children adopted abroad last year, most of them by American couples, were born to unmarried women, according to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.

Read the quote in context here.

So! How much reproductive choice is there in a country idea of keeping and raising a child is both so inconceivable and intolerable that the economic and social costs of doing so — for the mother and her child — is effectively punishment?

Oh, did you think I was talking about Korea there?

Remember, I’m not saying there should be no adoption. And I’m sure not saying there should be no abortion. Nor, for that matter, and I saying unplanned pregnancy ought to be no big deal. And I’m especially not saying that if we could somehow overcome the social and economic obstacles of single motherhood then single motherhood would become everyones magical preferred choice over abortion or adoption. Because bwhahahaha. Wouldn’t that be making universal assumptions about human nature

I’m just pointing out the gaping chasm in ostensibly “pro-life” logic with it’s absolute intolerance of social transformations that would be something other than a social, economic, familial, personal, and relationship disaster to be single and pregnant in the first place. Let alone single and a mother after.

[Note: you may need to read this post with a little more care than usual. I always get a little ranty about the three-legged stool of the anti-abortion, pro-adoption, “crisis” pregnancy mindset. —fl]

Kathryn Joyce of RHReality Check has a lovely article about an extra ugly practice: infant traffickers posing as “pro-life” supporters. The immediate subject is a woman, Carol Jordan’s, experience with a South Carolina branch of a “crisis pregnancy” network that’s actually a front for a the largest adoption agency in the country. At the end of her pregnancy — which she’d been coaxed and convinced to carry to term by the “clinic” — the woman started having second thoughts about abandoning the baby she’d carried in her own body for nine months.

The story is heart-wrenching.

“My options were to leave the hospital walking, with no money,” says Jordan. “Or here’s a couple with Pottery Barn furniture. You sacrifice yourself, not knowing it will leave an impact on you and your child for life.”
The next morning, Jordan was rushed through signing relinquishment papers by a busy, on-duty nurse serving as notary public. As soon as she’d signed, the couple left with the baby, and Jordan was taken home without being discharged. The shepherding family was celebrating and asked why Jordan wouldn’t stop crying. Five days later, she used her last $50 to buy a Greyhound ticket to Greenville, where she struggled for weeks to reach a Bethany post-adoption counselor as her milk came in and she rapidly lost more than fifty pounds in her grief.

When Jordan called Bethany’s statewide headquarters one night, her shepherding mother answered, responding coldly to Jordan’s lament. “You’re the one who spread your legs and got pregnant out of wedlock,” she told Jordan. “You have no right to grieve for this baby.”

Read the quotes in context here.

I know it sounds quirky that I’d support abortion “on demand” but not adoption on demand. The problem, though, that “on demand” means really, really different things depending on how it’s used. In one instance it’s an expectation that an individual can have a medical procedure she decides best suits her needs. In the other instance it’s an economic term for the other side of a transaction wherein the “supply” is coaxed out of human beings by intermediary vendors.

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Aside: Yes, there really, genuinely, totally, and completely are people who shouldn’t be parents. And sometimes they (half of them anyway) can get pregnant anyway. And sometimes parents die and leave their children orphaned. And when those things happen it’s really, really good that other people are willing to take those infants and children into their homes and their lives. So that part I’m not so dour about. At all.

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What I am dour about… in fact what I’m downright rock-ribbed morally conservative about, though, is the idea that since there’s actually not anything wrong with having sex, there’s nothing wrong with becoming pregnant when you have sex. Problematic maybe, and sometimes problematic in the extreme, but not wrong. And since there’s nothing wrong with becoming pregnant, there’s nothing wrong with choosing not to carry it to term. Nor is there anything wrong with choosing instead to have a baby. Again, problematic maybe, but not wrong.

I mention this in large part because virtually 100% of lore, tradition, convention, and law hold that except for very narrow circumstances it is, indeed, wrong to be pregnant and especially wrong to have children outside those circumstances. (Almost as wrong, incidentally, as it is to decide not to be pregnant.)

Which is where “crisis pregnancy” centers… and the very idea of “crisis pregnancies” comes in. Or, more accurately, come cashing in.

If it’s wrong to be pregnant and, oh, say, single, or young, or of a locally unfashionable race, class, ethnicity, or orientation and “oh by the way,” it’s also wrong to terminate one’s pregnancy then the answer would be…? Adoption? Right in one!

And look who’s there to help! “Crisis pregnancy” centers. Fronting for adoption agencies. Who, gee, for some reason never get around to, oh, say, helping pregnant women who want to keep their babies keep their babies! Helping them, maybe, navigate social services, mediate with the prospective mother’s partner(s) and family, locate child-friendly communities and employers and schools and places to live and even other more supportive potential partners or co-parents. And who never, absolutely ever, lobby or agitate or donate or organize for social acceptance of “unwed” mothers, or for policies to support them, or for programs to assist them.

Instead they’re invested, up to their scrawny, ugly, viscous, baby-trafficking necks in perpetuating the notion that “You’re the one who spread your legs and got pregnant out of wedlock. You have no right to grieve for this baby.” They’re invested… or otherwise directly financially interested in… the whole thousands of years old, straight out of the patriarchy, “abortion stops a beating heart” billboarding, “contraception is abortion” propagandizing, slut-shaming, whore-naming, “ruined flower,” “no one will want you now,” poverty-relishing, healthcare-withholding, social-assistance denying, “wages of sin” trumpeting culture of “crisis” which makes a pregnancy a crisis.

Nice little racket they’re running there, eh? Do everything you can to perpetuate a culture of slut-shaming. Then use that culture to a) shame women out of terminating their pregnancies and then b) shame them out of keeping them. Then top it all off by selling the resulting infants to “deserving” couples who’ll give the little sinner’s spawn a “good” home. Pocket the agency fees and image that’s going to get you into heaven when you die too!

#%

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This post, by the way, is via Sarah Posner at TAPPED who adds that on top of profiting from “crisis pregnancy” centers the Bethany service organization also somehow gets buckets of Federal Abstinence-Only education funding. Which at the very least seems like an ethical conflict of interest.

At the very least, they should have Abstinence-Only money taken away from them. They should be made to disclose (hey, maybe they way they keep lobbying for abortion service providers to disclose things) that they’re front groups for adoption agencies and that their sole loyalty is to their paying customers, prospective adoptive parents, and that therefore they will say and do whatever it takes to get you to effectively surrogate your pregnancy on someone else’s behalf.

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One last thing: do I need to say that at no point in the preceding post have I said I think women should continue unplanned, unwanted pregnancies instead of terminating them? No. At any point have I said I think an unplanned, unwanted, and especially unsupported pregnancy is any more of a walk in the park than a planned, wanted, supported one? No. And have I ever said, anywhere, that it’s not 100% preferable to have policies that support comprehensive sex education and policies favoring safer, more effective, easier to use, more reliable, more affordable, and more available forms of contraception and sufficient agency for both women and their partners to use them? Definitely not. Have I said I believe all children should stay with their families, particularly their mothers. No. And have I said you’re a bad person if you adopted someone? Or were adopted? Or gave up a child for adoption? No, no, and not at all.

On the other hand have I said any of the very real difficulties of pregnancy are compounded by a culture of shame and blame? Yes. Have I said “crisis pregnancy” centers by both name and nature have a vested interest in maintaining and exacerbating the culture of shame and blame? Yes. And that therefore they’re not the solution but a very real part of the problem? I’ve definitely said those things.

Amie Newman of RHRealityCheck.org is the latest to bring up one of the latest dividends of the pro-choice “common ground” initiative that tries to find, well, common ground with people who are leery, squishy, or squicked by abortion.

From Feministing:

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) was removed from the Democrats For Life of America’s advisory board because he supports contraception.

Apparently, DFA was tired of Ryan consistently harping on this crazy idea that the way to prevent unintended pregnancy is by ensuring access to contraception:

“DFLA gave Congressman Ryan ample opportunities to prove he’s committed to protecting life, but he has turned his back on the community at every turn,” said Kristen Day, the Washington, D.C.-based pro-life organization’s executive director.

What does “ample opportunities to prove he’s committed to protecting life” mean to DFLA? It seems clear that “protecting life” is not about preventing unplanned pregnancy and abortion. According to Ryan, 

“We’re working in Congress with groups that agree with preventative options while [the DFLA] is getting left behind,” Ryan said. “I can’t figure out for the life of me how to stop pregnancies without contraception. Don’t be mad at me for wanting to solve the problem.”

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I think [Ryan’s] removal [from the DFLA board] has the potential to shine a very real light on how extremist many of the anti-choice organizations are. In this case, we now have a legislator who says clearly that he is working in Congress with various groups that can agree that access to contraception is critical. This work will continue with Rep. Ryan while DFA and others insist on sacrificing what most Americans want and need in regards to their sexual and reproductive health, pledging allegiance to rhetoric instead.

Read her post, and untangle my quotes within quotes, here.

And just to keep the flying links confusing, here’s a comment I left on a similar post by Jill Filipovic on the same topic at Feministe.

This sort of thing is the biggest dividend of the “common ground” initiative: it drives a huge wedge between the majority of people who just wish there weren’t as many abortions from… the kind of people who want to use abortion to control (heterosexual?) sexual behavior.

And the thing is it’s not just a wedge issue: I don’t know about Rep. Ryan himself but plenty of people like him really are comfortable with increased support for contraception (which includes making it safer, more effective, easier to use, less expensive, more accessible, and more widely available.) And most are willing to let abortions (however uncomfortable it makes them) as long as they think progress is possible in reducing unwanted, unplanned pregnancies in the first place.

Is that sort of pragmatic “common ground” ideal? No. What would be ideal would be unreserved and unconditional support for women’s reproductive self-determination. But in terms of coalition building it’s far, far better to have them on our side than on the anti-choice side. And just making the “common ground” effort, as we see, works two ways. First, it makes us appear sympathetic to waverers. Second, it drags real hard-core anti-choicers like the DFLA, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the U.S. Congress of Bishops into sunlight… where even to erstwhile allies like Rep. Ryan or even, say, shell-shocked-by-conservatism’s Will Saletan, their creepiness is impossible to miss.

So yeah, no way we’ll ever get to common ground with the DFLA. But then we don’t have to. Creating opportunities for them to alienate their nominal supporters is enough. Because, seriously, do you think they’d have kicked Ryan out if someone else hadn’t reached out to him? No.

Three and a half years ago people were telling me no way. But the result that I was looking for back then is slowly percolating into existence.