CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTERS: Well, I don’t have Salon Premium, so I can’t read the story described here. All I can say is that the capsule description sure doesn’t sound like the center where I volunteer. You can read my thoughts on what a pregnancy center should be like here; and, as I say in that piece, every feature I describe is actually present at the center where I volunteer. (I wrote that piece when I was just starting counseling on my own, after a long training period, but I stand by all of it.) I wonder if Salon will do a feature story on abortion clinics that pressure women to abort (since I’ve heard firsthand descriptions of such clinics, from people whom I trust). I wonder if they will ever do a feature story on women who see fetal development pictures for the first time and say, awestruck, “I didn’t realize…!” (The things that most often make a difference when a woman is considering abortion: fetal development, talking about her relationships with family/friends/the baby’s father, general hopeful/heartening praise and advice from the counselor [i.e. not advice specifically about abortion, but advice that makes the woman feel more in control of her life and more hopeful about her own abilities], and [non-graphic, to the extent that’s possible] descriptions of the most likely abortion procedure. In about that order.)

I note, also, that I would never tell a client that her decision to abort is “selfish.” I have two inseparable goals: that the woman I’m counseling decides to keep her baby, and that she leaves the center feeling empowered, cared for, and listened to. I don’t sacrifice one goal for the other. I don’t know that I always succeed even at the latter goal, but I try hard, and, as far as I know, so do the other counselors. (I’ve observed some of them counseling and was very impressed.) Why do I bring this up? Because I’d been thinking about blogging this earlier, and the Salon story forms my excuse. Beyond the irresponsibility of giving counseling to a third party, beyond the even greater irresponsibility of “counseling” over the Internet, this piece really, really bothers me, for a lot of reasons that I hope should be obvious. Guilt-tripping your friend into killing her baby is not my idea of empowerment. (Although it’s OK by this guy, in the New York Times Magazine.)

It’s very important that pregnancy centers that do use guilt-trips or (especially) falsehoods be exposed, since those centers can do great harm. One of the women who volunteers at my center went to a CPC in the 1980s (or early 90s?), hated the way they treated her, went to Planned Parenthood, felt like she’d finally found someone who listened to her, aborted her baby–and came to deeply, deeply regret it. That’s just awful. Many centers have improved over time, as more post-abortive women enter the counseling field and talk about their experiences, and as the CPC movement grows and learns. It would be a service for pro-life or at least relatively open-minded or honest sources (and I do not generally consider Salon to be one, though, like I said, I haven’t read the article and it may be doing good work) to visit pregnancy centers with that perspective, to see which ones are working like mine and which ones aren’t.

For some great articles on women and abortion, click here and scroll down to “ProLife Writings.” For a listing of pregnancy centers, click here.