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[cameron]

They're called "Pregnancy Resource Centers" or "Crisis Pregnancy Centers". The grant is awaiting Governor Nathan Deal's signature.

AP: "Grant program for anti-abortion centers passes Georgia House"

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia would provide state-funded grants to "pregnancy resource centers" that offer medical care, counseling and other services to pregnant women while discouraging abortion, under legislation that easily passed the state House on Friday.

The state Senate approved the measure on party lines last month. Senators must agree to some minor changes before the proposal can head to Gov. Nathan Deal's desk.

To be eligible, facilities cannot encourage or discuss abortions as an option or refer women to clinics that perform abortions, except when the mother's life is threatened.

Other states, including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, have similar programs benefiting pregnancy centers.

The bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Renee Unterman of Buford, has said she wanted to provide a "positive" response to videos released this summer by abortion opponents showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing procedures for obtaining tissue from aborted fetuses for research.

A Texas grand jury later cleared the organization of wrongdoing, instead indicting two activists for their actions while making the undercover videos.

Democrats opposing the bill argued the centers use deceptive advertising to bring pregnant women in, and then refuse to discuss or discourage abortion regardless of a woman's opinion. They also argued that state money for sex education programs and parenting classes or counseling programs is a more successful way to decrease abortions.

"That's how you support the women of Georgia," Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Smyrna, said. "Not this bill."

The Guardian:

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are non-medical facilities that seek to counsel women out of having abortions. Many of these clinics have confusing names and advertising that suggest they provide abortion services, and others provide misleading medical information to discourage women from having abortions.

Often counselors will tell women that condoms are ineffective, that they will be unable to get pregnant again if they have an abortion, and that abortion and birth control cause cancer. There are more than 4,000 CPCs in the US and at least 12 states fund CPCs directly.

During debates on the bill, only female representatives spoke in opposition to its passage.

“If you want to decrease abortion, then let’s invest $2m in sex ed,” state representative Stacy Evans said on the statehouse floor Friday.

“We’re going to give $2m out to organizations not even licensed by the State of Georgia to provide medical care in any way?” said Staci Fox, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast. “If this is really about providing access to women, shouldn’t we be concerned about who it is that is giving that access?”

Fox also notes that the bill seems particularly misplaced in the midst of an epidemic of rural hospitals closing throughout the state of Georgia. A 2014 USA Today report found that five rural hospitals in Georgia had shuttered in a two-year period. At that time, an additional six rural hospitals faced precarious financial circumstances.

The proposal comes as access to abortion services narrows across the south, and a case before the US supreme court tests the validity of restrictive laws that have shut down clinics in surrounding states. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2011, 96% of Georgia counties had no abortion clinic, with 59% of Georgia women of reproductive age living in those counties.

When it comes to states providing funding directly to CPCs, historically “there is no requirement to ensure that the information women receive from the centers is medically accurate,” said Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute. “It is documented that there are crisis pregnancy centers that provide inaccurate or misleading information to women, and it would be helpful to ensure that the information women receive – especially when provided by public funds – is medically accurate and appropriate.”

“The main crux of the problem is that CPCs project themselves to be comprehensive women’s healthcare centers, and course they’re not,” said Dr Serina Floyd, an OB-GYN and fellow of Physicians for Reproductive Health.

In 2015, 10 budget bills were passed and signed into law in nine states with line items funding alternatives to abortion care, ranging from a $338,846 “pregnancy maintenance initiative” in Kansas to a two-year, two-million dollar allocation of funds in Minnesota for “positive abortion alternatives” to a $9.15 m allocation for “alternatives to abortion” in Texas.

More in the links.

 

[DarthWoo]

We had one of those locally that kept trying to shove their abstinence-only education programs into various school districts. It's been a while, but I recall one of their members basically admitting that it was a way to get Jesus into schools in a roundabout way.

 

[CreepingFear]

Fucking disgusting.

 

[Madness]

I've long wondered why those who don't believe in abortion due to their religion impose their own restrictions on everyone else. I am not pro abortion by any means. Any rational person is pro life. Even women who have abortions are pro life. But it's a human reality that unwanted pregnancies occur. They've always occurred historically. But we're in an age where pregnancies can be terminated before full fetal development.

Do you honestly think in 2016 if you banned abortion access for American women that they wouldn't buy abortion pills from China and India? That they wouldn't go to countries like Mexico or Canada or many other nearby places and have an abortion performed in less than ideal conditions? That you'd see an increase in the number of children sent to orphanages and adoption centers, or even dead fetuses in dumpsters.

I cannot fathom why those against abortion then also prevent free or affordable access to birth control and contraceptives. They don't teach proper sex education in schools, they don't provide adequate resources. How many people would not terminate pregnancies if states provided full maternity leave benefits, things like day care or child care provided by employers. Plenty of women who have abortions do so out of necessity. They can't or won't be able to care for a child then, afford a child, continue with their schooling or their job etc.

Abortion access is one of the great equalizers for women in a modern society as harsh as that may sound. For the first time really, women can and have sexual contact and not be burdened by a pregnancy if they choose not to. If your faith believes in life at conception, that's okay. Let other people do what they want and then let your God judge when/if the time comes.

 

[Eye for an Eye]

The suicide rate is extremely high in countries that ban abortions and most contraceptives for religious reasons. There are women jailed for miscarriages because they say she forced an abortion, leaving her children without any parents.

These states would never put forth the money on contraceptives like Colorado did. Of course that was a privately funded iniative that paid off ten folds.

California just recently passed a bill that states any of these crisis centers has to put out pamphlets that state they are not a medical facility with authorized medical personal. And that they state does provide coverage though Medi-Cal for abortion up to 24 weeks.

These states are trying to bring us back to a third world country with this bullshit.