Memo to Blue State Attorneys General and Activist Judges: Let Women Have the Choice to Be Helped

Kathleen Parker has a good column in the Washington Post, tied to this week’s Supreme Court argument in the New Jersey First Choice case: Pregnancy resource centers help women. They don’t “torture” them.

It’s also timely given the continuing campaign — mostly in the judiciary right now, as Dan McLaughlin writes about here — to save federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Or, rather, to prohibit taxpayer funding from not going to the abortion-industry leader.

Kathleen writes what should be the commonsense view of people of good will, if people knew, rather than believe propaganda meant to scare people away from pro-life pregnancy-resource centers and medical clinics:

Wherever one stands on the reversal of Roe v. Wade, one can’t possibly think it’s wrong to help women who want to carry their babies to term but lack support and resources. If it’s the faith-based motivation of providers that rankles, then you might want to brush up on religious liberty and the Constitution. Some argue that the centers are legal but unethical. In the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics, two doctors write: “Although crisis pregnancy centers enjoy First Amendment rights protections, their propagation of misinformation should be regarded as an ethical violation that undermines women’s health.”

She writes:

Whatever compels people to donate time or money to help the less fortunate when they’re most vulnerable should be reason for celebration, not punishment. If a pregnant woman seeking an abortion wanders into a pro-life clinic, it isn’t as though she’ll be tackled, shackled into a birthing chair and forced to recite the Nicene Creed. She can leave. Instead, such “misguided” women more often find helpful staff members, in many cases a nurse, doctor, radiologist or sonographer whose mission isn’t to misinform but to help women in distress make informed decisions.

Most of the centers offer long- and short-term support to mother and child and, in some cases, the father. A lot of these young women are unmarried and say they’d have their babies if they had family or other support. Many pregnancy resource centers offer just that — diapers, formula, baby clothes, strollers, cribs, as well as referrals to other services. Some even provide job training and housing.

Her closing line is cause for examination of conscience on the left — and maybe because it’s in the Democracy Dies in Darkness paper, there’s a shot it prods the consciences of that subscriber base: “Who these days says that women can’t think for themselves? Only the purveyors of choice, it seems.”

And if you haven’t gotten to know First Choice, listen to Aimee Huber, the executive director, here.

And as I linked to in The Lifeline this week, listen to my interview with Dede Chism from Bella Health and Wellness in Colorado here. These are the women who will change the face of abortion in America — along with the women they accompany. It will become implausible, as Kristan Hawkins from Students for Life likes to say.

It must.

Women deserve better than abortion, and America is better than abortion.

I still believe we know we are.