Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumShe Went Undercover to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. They Told Her Abortion Is Reversible.
In October, investigative reporter Olivia Raisner visited five anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centersclinics that often receive state funding, despite providing no medical services and pushing disinformation to dissuade pregnant people from choosing abortionin Indiana. She entered each clinic armed with her pregnant friends urine, a button on her shirt that secretly doubled as a camera, and scheduled appointments. There, she declined to sign any paperwork that asked her not to record conversations to make sure everything I did was legal, Raisner told me in a phone interview. The anti-abortion movement has been filming, not legally, for years now, and we dont want to stoop to their level, Raisner said.
On Thursday, Mayday Health posted a video capturing Raisners experiences at the CPCs. In one clip, after she turns in a positive pregnancy test and says shes considering abortion, an employee immediately begins spewing a steady stream of easily disproven lies. The staffer warns Raisner, without any evidence, that theres been a lot of suicides after abortion and that it is a very common problem. Ironically enough, research has shown that being denied an abortion negatively impacts someones mental health, and over 95 percent of people who have abortions dont regret the decision. Nonetheless, the employee sternly claims that other mental health issues could arise, warning Raisner that having an abortion could even cause her to develop an eating disorder. She told Jezebel that several clinics said this.
The clinic worker featured in Maydays video specifically emphasized the (false) claim that if Raisner used medication abortion, she had the option to reverse the abortion through a special pill, via a dangerous, non-proven method called abortion pill reversal. Raisner told Jezebel that as medication abortion becomes more widely used, given its continued availability in all 50 states, anti-abortion activists are increasingly pushing this bogus, medically dangerous claim.
Even as Raisner had the facts going into the anti-abortion clinics, she said it still required significant effort to keep my emotions and anger at bay as clinic staff members lied to her face. I knew that the longer I was able to stay in there, and really sell my story as a pregnant person, the more I would be able to record, she explained. I needed to show the interactions that are taking place countless times a day across the country, for all the pregnant people who go to these centers and dont have the information.
https://jezebel.com/she-went-undercover-to-a-crisis-pregnancy-center-they-1849900424
There is no way these outfits should be receiving any kind of outside funding. ANY kind.
BOSSHOG
(39,905 posts)Which begs the question, do christians have too much or too little time on their hands?
PoindexterOglethorpe
(26,730 posts)No regrets at all.
ShazzieB
(18,704 posts)See the second pic from the right in my signature line, below. No, that's not me, but those women speak for me and, it sounds like, for you.
I think the people who work in those fake "clinics" actually believe most of what they're saying. When someone who is already anti-abortion hears that stuff, confirmation bias kicks in, and it doesn't even occur to them to question or verify.
I once found myself in a conversation with a woman representing one of those groups (quite by accident; I did NOT seek it out), and when I tried to tell her abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer, she flatly refused to believe me. In her mind, she "knew" the "facts," and there was no way she could believe she was wrong about any of it. I know a brick wall when I see one and noped on out of there at that point, but the experience showed me something about how those people think that I will never forget.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(26,730 posts)are beyond comprehension.
I have never spoken about my abortion before this, but it really is long past time to do so. I'm currently 74 years old, long past potential childbearing or needing an abortion. I have one son, no daughters, so it would be easy to ignore the ongoing need to defend abortion rights.
Oh, and I have had similar conversations with women who think all abortions lead to bad consequences. None of those women have ever had an abortion themselves. They just buy into the idiotic propaganda of the anti-abortion people. As I often say, If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one.