The Archdiocese of Baltimore is suing the city in response to a law requiring anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers” to state up front that they do not refer women for birth control or abortion. They do not refer women for birth control or abortion. But they do not want to make that clear to potential clients.
Thomas J. Schetelich, chairman of the board for the Center for Pregnancy Concerns is quoted as whining saying:
Frankly, we would expect our city government to be supporting our sacrificial efforts rather than trying to hinder… We’re disappointed that our stand for life draws opposition.
No, Sir, your misleading advertising is what’s drawing opposition. The Archdiocese is arguing that the ordinance violates the rights of church members to freedom of speech and religion. I thought “Thou shalt not bear false witness” was a component of Christianity.
Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check made a great point:
I find this very, very strange! Because the anti-choice movement in the United States has been whistling while it works assiduously to pass laws in state after state restricting the freedom and compelling the speech–and the actions–of medical doctors, nurses, and clinic personnel in regard to the medically safe, legal procedure called abortion.
Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien said the law, which took effect in January, “is hurting the good people volunteering and giving so much of their resources to come to the help of pregnant women.” Anti-choice liars are so oppressed! Their practice of their religion requires them to mislead and deceive pregnant women in crisis! Won’t someone think of the Catholic Church?!
Since when is requiring truth in advertising some form of oppression? If a woman would like to enter an establishment which provides their services, she will still be able to do so. If she would prefer to enter an establishment that provides abortion services, she should be able to tell which office is which. Really, if a woman has already made up her mind that she is going to have an abortion, tricking her into the wrong building is unlikely to change her mind, but very likely to make your organization look dishonest.
CPCs are making too much news suddenly. I urge harpies to check out this Facebook page, if you have not already done so:
Lilith Fair: No money for crisis pregnancy centers!
Apparently, Lilith Fair organizers picked several charities tied to CPCs to give proceeds to! Epic fail!
Women need support when they become pregnant and are looking for answers; they don’t need rhetoric, and they really don’t need misinformation or information to be denied to them. This lawsuit better be dumped by the courts, or there will be hell to pay in Baltimore.
“Sacrificial efforts”? Man, that’s a lot of chutzpah. Lying to vulnerable women and teenagers, manipulating their emotions and giving them false facts-that’s quite a sacrifice.
Jacobson makes an extremely valuable point. Anti choice is about control-of women, of health care providers, of the entire abortion discussion. But they refuse to recognize any controls on themselves-they get to do and say whatever they want because of Teh Babeez.
Sorry, Church, truth in advertising applies to you, too. If you don’t like it, shut down.
It’s the exact same thing as when the Prop 8 supporters sued against GLBT groups revealing the names of those who’d contributed money so they could organize a boycott. If a liberal ever does anything that could be construed as even somewhat misleading, the entire movement is discredited, according to them. Meanwhile, conservatives lie outright, but it’s for Jesus, so that makes it okay.
Not as bad as when the Church threatened to stop providing social services in the District of Columbia if gay marriage were legalized. But not great either.
@veggiewood: It is, though. Social services are available elsewhere than the Church. But once girls and women get sucked or duped into a crisis pregnancy place, it can be very hard for them to get out and find the services they really want and need. Those places have no qualms whatever about lashing women with guilt that will last a lifetime, whatever they choose to do. It’s slut-shaming to the nth degree, because women are all sluts by virtue of being born women.
@veggiewood – Yeah, and I’m sure the only reason they didn’t follow through is out of fear that they’d lose their tax-exempt status. Seriously, with this sort of thing plus the pedophile priests plus the financial crisis, the feds need to be pulling a Henry VIII right about now (and I’m not talking about getting divorced).
Dear Baltimore Archdiocese,
Your right to free speech does not extend to providing misinformation to women looking for genuine medical support.
If being required to be honest is negatively impacting your unpaid volunteers, maybe you should be rethinking the premise on which these centers are based.
Yours in hypocrisy,
Katharsis
@NN: you are so right. Sarah Mclaughlin should be ashamed of herself.
The thing I don’t get is this: if the Church thinks there’s so much virtue in its anti-choice beliefs, why is it going to such lengths to hide it? It’s not like it’s a secret anyhow. But these places have all kinds of ambiguous or outright misleading names and never say upfront who’s running them, the way other Catholic-run nonprofits do. (That’s also true of the ones run by fundies.) If you think there’s something repellent in your beliefs such that you’d scare potential customers off, maybe you ought to think about those beliefs.
@mischiefmanager: One word: hypocrisy. Look at how the Catholic church has handled pedophile priests — they say they are handling the problem, but their method of “handling it” is to simply move the priests somewhere else, to offend again.
Not to be all, “I saw this on Law and Order!” but I did see this on Law and Order: SVU a few years ago. The perp of the week was a high school girl who wanted an abortion and went to what she thought was an abortion clinic…they led her on and told her they had no appointments, come back next week, etc. until it was too late for an abortion. I have to suspect this plot twist was grounded in real-life tactics of these places. Ugh.
Jaw droppingly ballsy. Why wouldn’t they trumpet their anti-abortion cred all over the place? This organization is beyond sick.
Actually I think it’s not so much that they are not proud of themselves (they clearly are) but that achieving their goal (trapping women) depends on shadyness. If a woman knows she won’t get any abortion counseling or referrals for BC at BaybeeBeMine CPC she might not waste her time there. But if she falls for their tricks, by the time she realizes she wants an abortion and won’t be getting one there or getting a referral from them it could be too late. Catholic Church mission accomplished!
Oh I understand that. I am just wondering why their need to deceive doesn’t trigger an iota of introspection into what that means about their mission.
@NefariousNewt: How is the priest thing hypocrisy? It’s completely consistent with this line of action. On the one hand, they are fighting to keep pregnant women in the dark about important options that are available to them, and on the other they are keeping parishes in the dark about the fact that their new priest is a sex offender who was transferred in from somewhere else to avoid getting caught.
@JD – Introspection? From the Church? Hahahahahahahaha, that’s a good one, happy April Fool’s to you too. ^_~
Uf! This is what happens when an organization which does not allow questioning internally branches out. They have no experience with reasoned discourse, so as soon as someone says anything less than flattering they go straight to persecution and martyrdom.
@bellacoker: I was trying to think how to say that very thing. The Church now exists only to perpetuate itself. Its methods of choosing leaders is based not on their moral character (if it ever was) but on how loyal they are. And when you get a supreme leader at the top who cannot be challenged and who is seen to embody the organization as a whole, you get what we’re seeing now. Although as a whole, Judaism has been free of this kind of behavior, when it happens, it tends to happen in Orthodox communities. No one wants to question the rabbi, or even look too closely at him, since questioning him means questioning everything they believe. Absolutism and religion are an exceptionally toxic mix.
bellacoker, I think I need you to be my Catholic recovery sponsor.
The more I grow older the more I find out what shit things the church I was born into has done the more ashamed and angry I become. How thrilling that men who have no lady parts can dictate what should be done with mine.
Personal opinion: I’m done. The roman catholic church can fuck OFF.
JD:
Awww, flattery will get you everywhere.
The stones on these assholes.
Roman Rabbi re: this statement: “This is in really bad taste.” Love!
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6320SL20100403
[...] Speaking of bullies… [...]