A bill that just passed the Baltimore City Council for the second time this session would require crisis pregnancy centers to post notices saying that they don’t provide birth control or abortion referrals. Naturally, anti-choicers are up in arms about having to tell the truth to women seeking unbiased information about their options when faced with an unplanned pregnancy:
Pro-lifers said the city clinics are being targeted.
“In essence, we feel that it’s an unnecessary form of harassment for the clinics that do a great job with women who want to keep their children and for women that are undecided that don’t know what exactly they’re getting into,” pro-life supporter Bill Wingard said.
As our previous blog post on the subject noted, these centers often shame women into carrying their pregnancy to term and steamroll them giving the child up for adoption. Additionally, they often spread untruths about abortion, claiming that it causes breast cancer, infertility, or severe depression, when no peer-reviewed scientific study has found these claims to be true.
Luckily, City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake knows exactly what the bill will do:
“I’m not interested in harassment — not interested in there being an aura of burden on these centers. All I’m interested in is making sure when a women comes in, when she’s in crisis, that she knows what she’s getting when she walks in,” Rawlings-Blake said.
Women deserve accurate, unbiased information about all their choices when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. This bill would take one step to ensuring that happens.
