From: ShunkW <shunkw@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:59 AM
Subject: Baltimore Archdiocese Sues for Right to Misinform, Mislead Women?
To: ShunkW <shunkw@sbcglobal.net>
Baltimore Archdiocese Sues for Right to Misinform, Mislead Women?
Friday April 9, 2010
In January, the city of Baltimore started forcing "crisis pregnancy centers" to accurately inform women if they do not provide abortions, do not provide any health or medical services, and do not provide any contraceptives. Many CPCs present themselves as resources akin to a Planned Parenthood when in fact they exist solely to prevent abortions or contraceptive use and promote a right-wing Christian ideology.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore doesn't approve of this new regulation. That's right, a regulation to provide accurate, truthful information about what an organization actually does is something which the Catholic Church thinks is worth suing over. Maybe they're afraid that the next step will be for churches to post warnings about predatory priests who may be inside? Come to think of it, maybe that's not such a bad idea...
Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien said the law, which took effect in January, "is hurting the good people volunteering and giving so much of their resources to come to the help of pregnant women."
Source: The Baltimore Sun1
Yes, telling the women you say you want to help about what you really can and will do is such a hardship. That is, it's a hardship when your brand of "help" depends upon deception.
Thomas J. Schetelich, chairman of the board for the Center for Pregnancy Concerns, said that the ordinance singles out the Catholic Church for its anti-abortion stance. The nonprofit, anti-abortion organization receives donations from religious groups supporting women who plan to take their pregnancies to term and operates three of the four local centers.
Thomas J. Schetelich is overlooking -- or perhaps deliberately avoiding -- the little point of how this ordinance doesn't actually single anyone out. The ordinance applies to every "limited-service pregnancy center." Any place that advertises itself as a "pregnancy center" to help pregnant women but only provides "limited services" must actually tell women up front that it only provides limited services. It doesn't matter whether they are Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, Jewish, or secular.
If it seems to single out Catholics, that may be because Catholics are the only or primary ones who fund, staff, and/or run limited-service pregnancy centers which present themselves as full-service and don't let women know that there are many services they won't be able to obtain there. This wouldn't mean that the ordinance is discriminating against the Catholic Church, but it perhaps it should be a signal that the Catholic Church is out of step with the rest of society and acting inappropriately.
"It's to ensure women's access to health information they need to make right decisions for themselves," [spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Maryland] Christine Lyn Diller said.
But does the Catholic Church really want women to have access to information they need to make decisions they feel are right for themselves -- or does the church only want women to be able to make decisions that the local Archbishop approves of?
Mark Graber, professor of law and government at the University of Maryland School of Law, said the law appears to favor the city. He said the Supreme Court has made it clear that advertising does not have the same protections as political speech.
"All government is doing here is asking people to tell the truth," Graber said. "And we do this all the time on the cigarette labels. This is simply telling a pregnancy center that you must tell the truth about what you do."
Religious organizations don't always seem to realize that once they move outside of religious or political speech, they start to fall under regulations which govern commercial speech. A "crisis pregnancy center" may not be a business in the traditional sense, but it does fall under commercial speech regulations. The only way around that would be for it to become an open arm of a church and advertise itself as such -- but that would defeat their goals as well, wouldn't it?
Jodi Jacobson2 puts this in perspective by comparing opposition to this truth-in-advertising ordinance with all the laws which anti-choice activists have been fighting for in recent years:
For example, thanks to anti-choicers, both medical professionals and women in states throughout the country are compelled to speak and act by laws perpetuating unnecessary practices and downright false information. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 17 states now mandate that women be given counseling before an abortion that includes information on at least one of the following: the purported link between abortion and breast cancer (6 states now require this; no proven link), the ability of a fetus to feel pain (9 states; no medical evidence in support of "fetal pain" in the first trimester when almost 90 percent of abortions occur; no evidence of "fetal pain" in the second trimester when 9 percent of abortions occur; "fetal pain" may occur in the 3rd trimester, but late abortions represent 1 percent of all abortions and happen when only in life and death situations), long-term mental health consequences for women of abortion (7 states; no medical or social science evidence to support these claims) or information on the availability of ultrasound (8 states).
At least 16 states have laws related to ultrasounds, some requiring they be performed and others requiring a woman be told where she can get a free ultrasound. There is no medical evidence for this practice.
In addition, according to Guttmacher, 24 states require a woman seeking an abortion to wait a specified period of time, usually 24 hours, between when she receives counseling and the procedure is performed. ...
So to sum up. Forcing medical professionals to perform and forcing women to comply with unnecessary and costly counseling and "medical" procedures; forcing women to endure unnecessary waiting periods, and suffer through medically inaccurate and/or outright false information not to mention other restrictions is ok. Treating women of all ages as juveniles is also ok.
Requiring CPCs to provide accurate truth-in-advertising about the legal services it does not provide to avoid ensnaring women into a system that will lie to them is not ok? [emphasis added]
It's not often that you see churches making prominent, public arguments against requirements to tell the public the truth and this says something very important about how such a church really feel about truth, reality, and an informed public. Any time any organization fights to keep the public ignorant, I say that they have forfeited any moral right to ever tell anyone what to do.
Sw
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Palash Biswas
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