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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (6713)	3/31/2006 5:12:30 PM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Crisis Pregnancy Centers Targeted in 'Crackdown on Deceit' By Randy Hall CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor March 31, 2006 (CNSNews.com) - Women seeking information on family planning and abortion would be protected by a "crackdown on deceit" and from "being lured into anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers" if a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday becomes law. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) was joined by 11 co-sponsors in unveiling the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women's Services (SDAWS) Act, which would require the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to "enforce truth-in-advertising standards for reproductive centers." Noting that Bush administration funding has provided a "windfall" for such pro-life centers, Maloney said that some of those facilities "have adopted the brazen tactic of advertising and presenting themselves as legitimate family planning centers in order to lure women seeking abortion information and talk them out of getting an abortion." To prevent this, the new bill would direct the FTC to "create rules that prohibit any organization from advertising services with the intent to deceive the public into believing that the organization is a provider of abortion services if it does not, in fact, provide abortion services." "When women are making a health decision, they should never be subject to deceit and trickery," said Maloney. "Some of these crisis pregnancy centers should be called 'counterfeit pregnancy centers.' They have the right to exist, but they shouldn't have the right to deceive in order to advance their particular beliefs." "We applaud Rep. Maloney's leadership in support of unbiased, medically accurate information for women," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "It's time for Congress to step in and hold fake clinics accountable. "Americans value honesty in advertising, and the so-called crisis pregnancy centers should not be exempt from living up to this basic principle," Keenan added. Among the bill's co-sponsors were Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and three fellow Democrats from New York state: Maurice Hinchey, Joseph Crowley and Gary Ackerman. The Empire State was the focus of controversy in early 2002, when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer issued subpoenas alleging that the crisis pregnancy centers "may have violated one or more ... statutes by misrepresenting the services they provide, diagnosing pregnancy and advising persons on medical options without being licensed to do so and/or providing deceptive and inaccurate medical information." As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the centers -- which often advertise their services only as "abortion alternatives" -- countersued, and a few months later, Spitzer withdrew the subpoenas. At the time, Chris Slattery, founder and director of the Expectant Mother Care facilities in New York City, called Spitzer's tactic an attack on the freedoms of religion and speech Slattery, whose organization is now known as EMC Frontline Pregnancy Centers and operates 15 clinics in the city he calls "the nation's abortion capital," called Maloney's new bill "the opening salvo of a great battle." "This is clearly a desperate move, as the pro-abortion forces are in a panic over a potential overturn of Roe v. Wade," Slattery told Cybercast News Service. "They're grasping for grassroots fundraising straws to mobilize their militant abortion base. "If the federal government can't even regulate the medical and health practices of the massively dangerous abortion industry, how in God's name can they get into the regulation of advertising to go on a nationwide witch hunt once again to try to cripple and shut down crisis pregnancy centers?" he asked. "But if we're going to go that way, let's have truth-in-advertising laws that, like cigarette labels, describe every chemical or surgical abortion for what it is: the destruction of human life through a seriously dangerous procedure with short and long-term side-effects," Slattery said. "We have no national abortion clinic regulations in an industry that has killed, since Roe v. Wade, thousands of women," he added. "Yet has Rep. Maloney, who's so concerned about women's health, proposed any bills to warn women of the health risks associated with abortion? No, not at all. "It's surprising that it's taken them so long to try and counteract us," Slattery admitted, "but we're going to fight back as aggressively as we did in '02 and give these folks an absolute run for their money. "We will fight for our right to reach abortion-minded women with the truth that expectant mothers do not get at the abortion clinics in New York and across America," he added.