Some Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Refuse To Comply With California Law Requiring Notice of Free State Abortions

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Dr. Susan Berry

Some pregnancy centers in California are not complying with a new state law that requires them to post information about free access to abortions through the state.

The new law – which went into effect on January 1 – was pushed through by abortion lobbying group NARAL after it conducted an “undercover investigation.” It’s the same kind of investigation Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby claim was illegal in the case of the Center for Medical Progress, the pro-life group that exposed the abortion business’ apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies and altering the position of babies during abortion in order to harvest the most intact organs.

According to KPCC:

The local NARAL sent undercover investigators to 45 of the 167 crisis pregnancy centers in California, and found a number of questionable practices, including at centers licensed as free or community clinics by the California Department of Public Health, according to its report.

The investigators said nine out of 10 centers they visited “falsely linked abortion with health problems such as breast cancer, infertility, mental health problems and even death,” the report said. It accused the centers of trying to “scare and manipulate women” by giving them “graphic, exaggerated descriptions of an abortion procedure” and showing them “gory videos.”

Now, KPCC says some pregnancy centers in the Los Angeles area are not complying with the law and that California authorities are not “aggressively enforcing” it as well.

Executive director Lori Berg of Foothills Pregnancy Resource Center in Duarte showed KPCC the “options counseling room” in which clients can view a video about the first trimester suction abortion.

“But there’s nothing gory,” she said. “A woman can see for herself, this is the procedure.”

In the video below, former abortionist – now pro-life advocate – Dr. Anthony Levatino uses medical animation to show what happens during a suction abortion:

Berg’s pregnancy center also includes an ultrasound machine and walls that hold posters of unborn babies in various stages of development.

“This picture – eight weeks – can make a difference,” Berg continues. “Now, if someone says that’s coercive – this is science. This isn’t something I dreamt up.”

The abortion industry opposes ultrasound laws that have been passed in some states that require – as a part of “informed consent” – that a woman considering an abortion first have an ultrasound prior to going through with the procedure.

Berg’s center also provides supportive counseling for women who have had abortions and donates free diapers and baby clothes to new mothers who need them.

Berg said the controversy over the law is similar to “the cola wars.”

“I’m Pepsi-Cola, I’m not Coca-Cola,” Berg says. “Don’t force me to put Coca-Cola posters or even hand out free coupons for Coca-Cola.”

In order to comply with the law, pregnancy centers can post a notice about free abortions in their waiting area, personally hand the notice to their clients or send it to them online. The law also requires a clinic to notify its clients if it is not licensed by the state as a medical facility.

NARAL and other members of the abortion industry, however, oppose any state laws that require abortion clinics to have the same health and safety standards as other outpatient surgical facilities, claiming these are an infringement on “women’s healthcare,” the euphemism the industry uses for abortion.

KPCC says it also found pregnancy centers in Glendale, Torrance and Los Angeles that don’t post the abortion notice in their lobbies.

Matt Bowman, an attorney representing the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates – which includes more than 100 California pregnancy centers – says abortion lobbying groups such as NARAL claim that any opposition to abortion is “lying,” and that attempts to regulate pregnancy centers are simply censorship.

Bowman is also senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, which is also representing pregnancy centers in one of five lawsuits seeking to overturn NARAL’s notification law, on the basis that the law violates the centers’ freedom of speech and religion.

“All I can confirm is that many of these centers have said, in their court papers, we cannot refer out women and their unborn children for the destruction of the child, paid for by the state of California,” he said.

“The law was carefully structured to share responsibility between state and local entities to make sure that in every county, each and every pregnancy clinic was complying with the law,” says Jill Habig, special counsel to Attorney General Kamala Harris – who has received thousands of dollars in contributions to her re-election campaign from Planned Parenthood.

Harris’ office says it is committed to upholding the abortion notice law in court.

Kermit Gosnell – who was convicted of murder in 2013 for severing the spinal cords of babies born alive during abortions – also was found guilty in the death of one of his patients due to an anesthesia overdose. Despite complaints about the abuses occurring in Gosnell’s abortion clinic, both the abortion industry and the state of Pennsylvania failed to intervene in his “house of horrors” for nearly two decades. Additionally, the media was disinterested in covering the case.

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