| ■ Pregnancy Centers Overstate Abortion Risks: Report | 06.07.20 |
| Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives' Government Reform Committee issued a report Monday saying that pregnancy-resource centers are providing false information about the physical and mental health effects of abortion. Posing as pregnant 17-year-olds, Congressional aides called 25 pregnancy centers that have received some federal funding over the past five years. The aides were routinely told of increased risk for cancer, infertility, and stress disorders, according to the report, which was prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the Associated Press reported. A small fraction of the more than 4,000 pregnancy clinics nationwide get federal funding, mostly for promoting sexual abstinence. With a few exceptions, the federal government doesn't give money specifically for the counseling operations, but Waxman's staff said 25 centers got "capacity building grants." Waxman said that while Americans are divided on the abortion issue, no one should support misleading teenagers about basic medical facts, and those centers should be held accountable for the information they dispense. "It's wrong to pour millions of federal dollars into organizations that are providing false health information to vulnerable teenagers," Waxman said. Care Net, an umbrella group for evangelical pregnancy centers across the United States, instructs affiliates to tell callers there is a possibility that abortion can lead to greater risk of breast cancer, according to Molly Ford, an official with the organization. She said there have been several studies that say it does, and several that say it doesn't. A 2003 National Cancer Institute workshop, however, concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer, the AP reported. |