Babies and Pregnancy Centers Make Cover of Time Magazine
By Peggy Hartshorn, President
After nearly 40 years of tireless ministry, pregnancy centers are being noticed by mainstream media. Although the first centers were founded in the late 1960’s, until recently we have been a well-kept secret. With the publication of Time’s February 26 story on centers, with fetal models on the cover (and the ABC national news segment on centers last November) it seems we have been discovered!
The story zeroes in on one center, Asheville Pregnancy Support Services in Asheville, NC, but also on the Asheville abortionist (Lorrie, who refuses to give her last name), and a Presbyterian pastor who meets with the abortionist and others to find “common ground.” It ends with the conclusion that the abortion decision is not a simple one and that situations facing individual women are very complex – ideas that we would agree with. But there is still a danger in articles like this one that have a “feel good” effect.
Before I comment more fully on the negative, let me highlight some of the very positive aspects of the article. Deborah Wood, CEO of the Asheville center (who did a marvelous job in the interviews!), is described as we would want to be: “kind, calm, nonjudgmental, a special-forces soldier in the abortion wars who is fighting her battles one conscience at a time.” The article makes clear that the center is not a “fake clinic.” It has medical personnel and physicians.
The article mentions Heartbeat International, Care Net, NIFLA, and Focus on the Family’s Option Ultrasound™ program, and it publishes the Option Line phone number, 1-880-395-HELP, for 4 million readers! It has maps indicating the distribution of pregnancy centers and comparing our numbers (about 2,300) to the small number of abortion clinics. It is great to get this information out there!
But we can bask in the glory and forget that the story can also be read to reinforce stereotypes about our centers:
- not all centers are using the most accurate or up-to-date information on abortion’s effects (it states “information and ideology conjoin”);
- some centers use scary pictures of aborted babies (although the featured centers do not);
- some consider center activities (such as giving baby booties to women with positive pregnancy tests) “manipulation”;
- some centers answer their phones in such a way that women drive hours to get there for abortions only to be shown pictures of aborted babies.
Even the pro-life pastor, Rev. Hutchinson, is quoted as confessing, “I never would have said that the ends justify the means . . . but I know that it was in my heart – if lying helps save a baby’s life, that glorifies God.” He now has changed, due to efforts to find “common ground” with the abortionist and others, and he concludes, “This whole process has reminded me that Jesus is not a Machiavellian. It really helps me trust the sovereignty of God. He is in control of who lives and dies. My effort is to serve folks, and the means I use matter.”
I would agree 100%, but this all reinforces the impression that there ARE those in our movement who are Machiavellian – and this is a wedge that the other side uses to discredit and divide us.
Finally, Lorrie is sympathetically portrayed as an abortionist who, along with her nurse midwife, has been targeted and threatened by pro-lifers (not the pregnancy centers!), her clinic has been bombed and had its windows shot out, but what she really wants is to reduce abortions.
The subtle danger of this article is that it “feels good.” Centers are well-intentioned, the other side doesn’t want to see women manipulated, abortionists want to reduce abortions, and pro-life pastors are soul-searching. These players in Asheville are seeking “common ground.” And then there are the clinic bombers, the only villains of the story.
And what of the “common ground” that has been arrived at in Asheville? This is the dangerous one -- “to decrease abortions.” This will be a rallying cry for pro-choice candidates in the next elections and they are trying to make the general public, who are conflicted about abortion, comfortable enough with it that they will vote for them! In the Time article, the reporter assumes that everyone will agree that promoting birth control is the prime method of reducing abortion. We know that birth control promotion (and “safe sex”) are part of the cause of the large number of abortions, not part of the solution.
Articles like the one in Time may help us, but they may be part of a strategy to further divide the pro-life movement into the good guys and the bad guys, to blur the line between right and wrong, and to lull the general public into thinking there IS “common ground” in promoting birth control. This would ultimately set back our efforts to save lives, promote the sanctity of every human life, and return our country to one of its root values, the inalienable right to life.
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