crossposted from Stop The ACLU
Via BP News
A new congressional effort to police advertising by crisis pregnancy centers is unnecessary, pro-life advocates said, and unconstitutional, free-speech defenders charged.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has long promoted itself as the leading defender of freedom of speech and civil rights, is right in the middle of the controversy, promoting the new legislation to the surprise of some.
However, this is not suprising to us at all. The ACLU have a long history of being selective in defending free speech, especially when it comes to pro-lifers. Besides, defending the first amendment is only third on the ACLU’s list of priorities, abortion is their number one priority.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, introduced March 30 the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act (SDAWS), which calls on the Federal Trade Commission to bar organizations from advertising that they provide abortion services when they do not. Just 12 House of Representatives members have cosponsored Maloney’s bill, but leading abortion rights organizations, including NARAL Pro-choice America and the National Abortion Federation, are behind it.
The ACLU also endorsed it, and that stunned some who have defended the organization’s work in the past.
“[W]hat about the First Amendment?” asked Nat Hentoff, a syndicated columnist and a former ACLU board member, according to The New York Sun. “When you have the state, with its power, deciding what is deceptive on something as thoroughly controversial as this, it goes against the very core, it seems to me, of the First Amendment.”
Hentoff called the ACLU endorsement “a really extraordinary mistake.” The ACLU advocacy for abortion rights has eclipsed its support for free speech, he told The Sun. “It’s the problem the ACLU has had for years,” Hentoff said.
And its not likely to change anytime soon. After all, some of the ACLU’s most lucrative donations are from pro-abortion groups. Its a much more profitable business than milking taxpayers over prayer and such. It is a $90 billion dollar industry. No wonder the ACLU thinks teaching abstinence is harmful. Its harmful to their pocketbook.
The proposal is unneeded, representatives of crisis pregnancy centers said.
“This legislation is unnecessary, as it aims to cure an ill that doesn’t exist,” Care Net President Kurt Entsminger said in a written release. Care Net is a nationwide network of about 900 evangelical Christian, pregnancy help centers. “This is nothing more than a routine attack on pregnancy centers by organizations seeking to limit their competition. We find it particularly curious that in her announcement Rep. Maloney did not cite one example of a pregnancy center that is engaging in deceptive advertising.”
Tom Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family Life Advocates (NIFLA), said in a written statement that crisis pregnancy centers “are providing accurate, truthful and complete information to empower women to choose life. The only fraudulent activity in this area comes from those in the abortion industry who want to withhold truthful information from abortion-vulnerable women."
Amen to that! I’ve always thought abortion advocates were the ones that were deceptively named. Planned Parenthood? How deceptive is that? It has absolutely nothing to do with parenthood, or planning. Here is the straight talk on the deceptive business of abortion.
So-called “counseling” in Planned Parenthood clinics is really marketing, providing few facts and is heavily biased in favor of abortion.25
- Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) was started by a racist, Margaret Sanger, who drew upon writings from socialists and eugenicists. She even published articles from Adolf Hitler’s director of eugenic sterilization, Ernst Rudin, and spawned “The Negro Project,” her strategy for eliminating the black population. In the last week of July 2002, a lawyer in Missouri filed a federal lawsuit against PFFA for their failure to fully inform women about abortion. The lawyer also agreed that PP is a racist organization that targets minority women.
- “If a girl decides to carry her baby to term, ... clinics don’t make any money. They make money only if she has an abortion. So, inevitably, clinics put pressure on women to abort.”—Carol Everett, who once owned and operated four lucrative abortion clinics.
- “Nita Whitten, who once worked in an abortion clinic, says she was trained by a professional marketing firm in how to sell abortion over the phone. The main tactic abortion clinics use is fear. The phone operator asks the girl how late her period is and then tells her, ‘You’re pregnant.’ Not ‘You might be pregnant,’ but ‘You are pregnant.’ When a girl calls, Nita says, the object is not to help her; it’s to ‘hook the sale.’”
- After the abortion, the girl is given free birth-control pills since, on the pill, she’s more likely to be sexually active. But since young people often do not remember to take pills consistently, there’s a good chance the girl will return to the clinic pregnant again. As Carol Everett puts it, “birth control sells abortions. Abortion is a business. A big business that uses slick marketing tools.” read more
In announcing the introduction of her bill, Maloney said in a written release that some crisis pregnancy centers “should be called ‘Counterfeit Pregnancy Centers.’ They have the right to exist, but they shouldn’t have the right to deceive in order to advance their particular beliefs.”
Maloney’s bill is H.R. 5052. There is not a companion bill in the Senate.
Counterfeit Pregnancy Centers? This bill is garbage! Can you imagine the reaction if we were to create legislation forcing abortion providers to label their places “Baby Killing shops?” I’m sure we all could come up with some creative ones.
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