Another idea for crisis pregnancy centers

By Rebekah Dryden

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Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:35 PM EDT

Representative Cliff Stearns (R-Florida) is sponsoring a bill that would provide federal grant money to help crisis pregnancy centers purchase sonogram machines. Much of the opposition to Mr. Stearns' bill has to do with the centers themselves. Here's how NARAL Pro-Choice America explains its opposition to the bill:

While some centers provide an honest setting for pregnant women, many do not: they entice women to the center under the pretense of providing the full range of reproductive options, including abortion.  Instead, the volunteers at these deceptive centers use anti-abortion propaganda, misinformation and intimidation to dissuade women from exercising their right to choose.

H/T Amanda Hess

From a crisis pregnancy center in Maryland.

Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) has something else in mind for crisis pregnancy centers -- something that, incidentally, gets right at the issue NARAL is raising. Ms. Maloney has long been pushing legislation that would order the Federal Trade Commission to regulate crisis pregnancy centers, prohibiting them from advertising as abortion providers if they don't actually provide that service.
Representative Maloney first introduced the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women's Services Act in 2006. She has subsequently re-introduced it in the last two Congresses. And her office tells us she plans to re-introduce it again in this one. But for its 112th Congress revival, her staff tells us there will be "a slight but important" change to the bill that's meant to respond to concerns raised by crisis pregnancy centers that felt they were being unfairly targeted.
The new version of the bill, Ms. Maloney's staff tells us, will not only prohibit crisis pregnancy centers from advertising abortion services they don't provide, it will also prohibit abortion providers from advertising designed to make it seem as if they don't provide abortions.