Disclaimer proposed for anti-abortion clinics

[cal04]

Information from centers is misleading, inaccurate, Montgomery officials say
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111016767.html?hpid=moreheadlines

A regulation proposed by Montgomery County officials Tuesday would require pregnancy centers run by abortion opponents to give women a disclaimer so they don't mistake the centers for medical clinics and so they understand the source of the information given to them.

The centers can appear to be abortion clinics and often bill themselves as places to get information on the procedure, but they seek to dissuade women from ending their pregnancies.

The camps in the abortion debate see those clinics, and the conversations there, often with women at moments of personal distress, through the prism of their advocacy and experience. Abortion rights supporters cast them as manipulative, dishonest and dangerous, and abortion opponents see them as lifesaving, last-ditch refuges that help those who decide against termination.

At issue in Montgomery, as in Baltimore, New York, West Virginia and other places such proposals have been taken up, is whether government officials should reach into the centers' activities by requiring them to provide certain information to those who walk in or call for advice. Montgomery officials who back the regulation -- it has seven co-sponsors on the nine-member County Council -- say it is a matter of consumer protection. A hearing on the measure is scheduled for Dec. 1.

"There is misleading and medically inaccurate information that's being provided to young women at these centers," said Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large), who introduced the proposal. Accurate information is in the public's interest, she said. "It's just a disclosure regulation. It's not telling them they can't look for clients. It's not telling them they can't counsel clients."

[EFerrari]

1. There's one of those centers in the neighborhood down the road.

They prey on this community full of young and somewhat observant Latinas. I may have to go there and do a Skittles.

[clear eye]

2. Your post seems to mix two alternatives together.

Requiring a disclaimer on the one hand, and requiring these places to actually provide abortion info on the other, are two separate proposals. I prefer the former since given their beliefs and lack of medical staff these places can't ever provide accurate info on abortion.

A disclaimer would go a long way toward "aborting" (pun intended) the subterfuge. Requiring such places to bill themselves accurately as providing counseling on "abortion alternatives", rather than allowing them to continue to claim that they provide counsel on abortion, seems to me to protect everyone's rights, though these places won't give up their current scam w/o a protest.