For pregnant women who cannot afford an appointment with a physician, pregnancy help centers are an option. These facilities offer free health services, counseling, and/or advice to pregnant women. Baton Rouge has six of them, and of those, five have a pro-life stance.
Madison Casey, co-president of the LSU Pro-Life Club, describes this ratio as a “win” for the pro-life movement. Supporters of these clinics believe that they provide a valuable and necessary service in the community. 
But opponents argue that the information found on the clinics’ websites can be biased or even medically inaccurate. For example, the website of the Care Pregnancy Clinic, an affiliate of pro-life organization Heartbeat International, says that abortion causes breast cancer. The American Cancer Society, among other health advocates, maintains that this is false.
The website for Pregnancy Problem Center, a faith-based resource provider, lists “marrying the baby’s father” as an alternative to abortion. 
One pro-life clinic in Baton Rouge, Woman’s New Life Center, takes a less extreme stance. Angie Thomas, CEO of this facility, maintains that they are a “social service provider, not an activist organization,” and that their patients are given all the information needed to make an informed decision about their pregnancy. Their Facebook page is filled with glowing reviews from former patients.
Yet their website lists serious physical health risks that can result from abortion (such as pelvic infection, heavy bleeding, and suicidal thoughts) without mentioning their likelihood– which is in fact rather small.
In fact, research suggests that abortion only leads to a major physical health complication 0.23% of the time, which means that it carries about the same risk as a colonoscopy. Another study, published by the National Institute of Health, found that the risk of death is about fourteen times higher with childbirth than a legal abortion.
When I asked Thomas why the type of information found in the latter study is not included on the website, she said that she had not seen the study but does not believe that it would be relevant to her clinic’s patients. In her words, “whether abortion has a safer mortality rate than childbirth is generally not what women are thinking about when they’re making this decision. They’re very sad when they’re thinking about an abortion. Generally, it’s not a very empowering thing.”
Thomas maintains that patients are not advised or pressured to make any decision when they seek help at her facility.
But Woman’s New Life is located next door to Delta Clinic, which is the only abortion provider in the city. There are almost always protesters outside of the abortion clinic, and two workers there told me that women in their parking lot are sometimes tricked by the protesters into going to Woman’s New Life instead.
When I asked one of the protesters if this was true, he said that he would rather not say. 
He also told me that as far as he knows, Woman’s New Life is not involved in this  or any other sidewalk protests. But pro-choice groups often argue that pro-life clinics should not be located so close to abortion clinics because of the pressure it places on patients. 
Ultimately, leaders on both sides of the abortion debate believe that women deserve accurate, unbiased information wherever they seek help. Part two of this story will explore the Women’s Right to Know booklet, a collection of information that abortion doctors are legally required to give to each patient.
[1]https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Fulltext/2015/01000/Incidence_of_Emergency_Department_Visits_and.29.aspx 
[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270271