About 200 people attended a May 6 fundraising dinner at the Capitol Plaza in Montpelier to support Central Vermont Pregnancy Services.
Pregnancy centers provide an alternative to Planned Parenthood facilities for pregnant women. Planned Parenthood is a deceptive name for that organization, which actually plans little but abortions, and does not provide comprehensive support services to expectant mothers who wish to keep, rather than execute, their unborn babies.
Many pregnancies are not at all planned. Many women, especially if they are young or struggling financially, would prefer not to have an abortion but feel lonely, unsupported, and overwhelmed. Pregnancy centers have grown up to answer this need unmet by those focused on abortion, to provide struggling women with emotional support, training, diapers, formula, instruction in infant care, and a place to go that doesn’t make them feel pressured to end their pregnancy.
About 200 people attended a May 6 fundraising dinner at the Capitol Plaza in Montpelier to support Central Vermont Pregnancy Services (carenetcv.org). This Barre facility has operated for three decades, providing family planning support to thousands of Vermont women. Speakers Saturday included Cindy Tabor, Carenet.org’s current director, and Robyn Chambers, executive director of advocacy for children with Focus on the Family.
Both of these strong women delivered passionate presentations about the importance of the work being done to protect women at the nation’s (and Vermont’s) pregnancy centers. Both shared personal testimonies that matched the experiences of many of the young women who arrive at Pregnancy Centers – overwhelmed, confused, and alienated. Both emphasized the importance of helping mothers feel valued and supported.
A common theme of the dinner was the feeling expressed by many mothers that “If I had just one person to support me through my pregnancy, I wanted to keep my baby.” Many women do not have even that one person, and may be burdened financially as well as being overwhelmed by the prospect of going through a pregnancy, and learning how to care for a newborn, with no family or partner support.
Cindy Tabor shared a new video commercial for the Barre Center. Yet Tabor and others are concerned by recent efforts by Vermont (and its attorney general) to sanction such facilities for allegedly misleading women by not clearly explaining that they are not abortion centers. These concerns are unfounded for most if not all of Vermont’s pregnancy centers.
There does not appear to be anything misleading about the Women’s Center in Barre. It does not charge for services, and misleads no one. At its web site, it explains that abortions are an option:
If you are in your first trimester, you have the option of a medication/medical abortion (the abortion pill) or an abortion procedure. Both choices have health risks and side-effects. Before you decide, you should discuss your medical history and any health conditions with a doctor or nurse.
When women conceive a child, their options are essentially binary: either keep the child to term (including for adoption), or abort the fetus. It stands to reason that support should be provided for both groups. Planned Parenthood receives public monies and administers public funds, but does not offer pregnancy support services. Pregnancy centers are privately funded, and support women who decide to nurture their babies through pregnancy and then life.
Pregnancy centers do not shame women. They seek to support and encourage women who actually want to keep their babies, but who feel they have nowhere to go. Pregnancy centers focus on the mother-to-be, and make a huge difference in the pregnancies of hundreds of Vermont women, as well as in the health and care of babies both in the womb and as newborns.
It appears that the attacks on Vermont’s pregnancy centers are not based in fact but in partisan progressive aggressiveness. The complaint that Women’s Pregnancy Centers deceive women does not reconcile with the clear disclosures provided. Perhaps Planned Parenthood doesn’t like competition with its baby-extinguishing side of the binary pregnancy services on offer, and opposes women who seek to affirm life and motherhood.
Planned Parenthood does not offer baby care or other pregnancy support to would-be mothers, though it does advertise that it offers “patient support counseling” services in Vermont. Does Planned Parenthood explain clearly to women that they may decide to keep their child? – that is not clear from their advertising.
Planned Parenthood posts online that it is “proud to provide health services and information to gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men”:
Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men need to be particularly concerned about STDs, as they face higher rates of STDs, including HIV/AIDS and syphilis. New numbers on U.S. rate of syphilis infections, for example, show that rates have more than doubled since 2000 — with the increase exclusively in men. Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men face the highest — and rising — rates of syphilis infections.
Does Planned Parenthood explain that abstinence is a pathway to avoiding HIV/AIDS and syphilis for men who have sex with men? Is this omission of simple fact a “deceptive act or practice”?
Such a claim would be deemed absurd by most. But so too is the claim – embodied in the shameless S.37 – that pregnancy centers who support expectant mothers with care not offered elsewhere are “misleading” these women. Moreover, despite misinformation by abortion proponents that there are no emotional consequences to women following an abortion, common sense and experience prove many women do in fact suffer profound remorse. Pregnancy centers assist women to avoid that regret by giving birth to a human miracle rather than a lifelong irrevocable regret, and also fully nurture and support those who opt for an abortion: specific services are offered in “post-abortion recovery care.” Does Planned Parenthood similarly support women who regret receiving an abortion at their many clinics?
The attack on Pregnancy Centers is slanderous and unfounded. Hopefully these largely baseless allegations of false advertising will educate more women of the opposite – that abortion advocates misinform women about the perils of abortions, and seek to stifle those who tell the truth and support mothers-to-be. (And is Planned Parenthood, in its advertising and provision of services for “gender-affirming care,” disclosing to clients the risks of cancer and other health problems caused by experimental hormone blockers? To fail to do so is grossly deceptive.)
With the enactment of S.37, perhaps this dispute will end up in court. Regardless, Vermont women can count on genuine facilities such as Central Vermont Pregnancy Services to be there for them no matter what.
John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.
Thank you John. The survival of our nation as a free and prosperous nation for our children and their children requires we defeat the culture of death and destruction that owns the Democrat Party. The forms of death and destruction seem to grow each year. What a contrast to the Biblical worldview where we are encouraged to procreate and then train our off-spring in the ways of the Lord. Why anyone would pick a worldview that sees children as a liability over a worldview that sees children as a blessing is beyond me. Our children were and are a blessing and our first grandchild is seen as a blessing to his parents and our entire family. That is life!
Vermont has a generational welfare problem. The hidden Truth of some knowing if they have kids, they get more incentives than being a productive, responsible adult. Why? Because that is how they were raised in a welfare system where grandma and mom were welfare recipients. Many are not taught to “not get pregnant” or the consequences and responsiblities of being a parent because welfare will take care of them and their children. Many just do exactly the same as they are set up and encouraged to do so – be uneducated, unprepared, and unaware there is a way out of that endless cycle. Why is Vermont’s biggest industry non-profits – because there are plenty of hapless and manipulated clients to justify endless welare in Vermont. Decades worth.
Refreshing alternative to the death gulag of planed parenthood. Of course as we are learning ever so slowly any leftist organization uses names totally opposite of what they are same as leftist political hacks name bills opposite of what the are or do. Liberalism, Socialism, Communism all rely on lies to garner supporters and the vast leftist voter base eagerly oblige them by believing every single one. Only the truth of freedom will set you free. .