Depending on who you ask, there are two definitions for what a CPC is. Pro Life Louisiana’s website describes them as “centers that are willing to provide counseling during a pregnancy to educate you on all the choices that are before you, including abortion. In ad- dition, many provide post abortion counseling, assistance after birth, adoption assistance, and many other services.”
An affiliate website, adifficultchoice.com, states that CPCs are “local, non-profit orga- nizations designed to help those facing an un- planned pregnancy,” and says that all services are free, professional and confidential.
The image of CPCs painted by pro-life organizations is a bright one. Their websites are cheery, featuring young woman looking inquisitive in front of pink backgrounds. They offer many free services, they have 24-hour ho- tlines and they can recommend you to a center close by, where you can speak to someone face- to-face about your options (the word options is used in abundance). Their message is clear: they are here to help confused young women. However, pro-choice organizations paint a much darker, sinister picture of the centers. National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) Pro-Choice
cancer. You’re vulnerable, scared, and confused. You have walked into a so-called “crisis preg- nancy center” (CPC), and you have been lied to and manipulated. You deserve the truth: comprehensive, unbiased, factual, and medi- cally accurate information. You likely won’t get these things at a CPC.”
They go on to detail the ways in which some states support Crisis Pregnancy Cen- ters: Louisiana is one of 23 states that have laws protecting CPCs; one of nine states that have “Choose Life” license plate programs (the proceeds from those license plates go directly to funding CPCs); one of 20 states that refer women to CPCs; and one of eleven states that fund CPCs directly.
If someone Googles “abortion Baton Rouge,” the first result that comes up is the Delta Clinic, the only abortion clinic still op- erating in Baton Rouge. The rest of the links on the first page are to either crisis pregnancy centers in the area or articles about how the state government has recently made it much harder for women to have abortions in Loui- siana. One of those first page articles refers to the signing of a bill that threatened to close down
The law, signed in June, requires all doctors per- forming abortions have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 minutes of the clinic. Though veiled as a way to make abortions safer, this law was proposed with the intention of shutting down abortion clinics. Rep- resentative Katrina Hamilton, who proposed the law, has been quoted multiple times saying that she “looks forward to the day abortion is not legal in this country.” Abortion doctors scrambled to apply for admitting priv- ileges in nearby hospitals, but nearly all were denied.
The Sunday before this law was set to go into effect, a federal judge ruled that doctors could continue to perform abortions while seeking their admitting privi- leges, temporarily blocking the law. At the time of the judges ruling, there was only one doctor in Louisiana who had hospital admitting privileges. That doctor has stated that if all other doctors in the state were forced to stop performing the procedure, he would be so fearful for his own safety that he would also stop performing abortions.
While there is only one abortion clinic in the Baton Rouge area, there are five crisis pregnancy cen- ters. Because they are not in any way medical offices, crisis pregnancy centers are not subject to the same laws and restrictions that clinics are. As the state’s five clinics are threatened legally, 32 CPCs are able to exist without legal restrictions, supported financially by Louisiana’s powerful network of pro-life donors.
Both sides believe that they are helping women, and that their opposition is operating with malicious intent. There is no gray area.
Unfortunately, this means that women searching for in- formation are often caught in the middle of a fight for their attention – a fight that only causes more confusion during an already confusing time.
