The headline to Mackenzie Mays’s article in the Los Angeles Times provides a succinct summary of the article’s perspective: “Even in blue California, attempts to regulate controversial antiabortion centers continue to fail.”
It is important to recognise that the lack of progress is not a result of a lack of effort. Some individual cities and the state of California are attempting to pass laws and issue fines that are so draconian that they will force the closure of Pregnancy Help Centers, which provide assistance to women facing unplanned pregnancies.
It is remarkable that they have survived and even thrived in a state that is as unabashedly pro-abortion as California.
The narrative adheres to the conventional pro-abortion perspective. Mays asserts that everything Pregnancy Help Centers do is misleading. The information provided to women by these centres is either false or misleading, the effects of abortion on some women are exaggerated, and the design of a new centre opening soon is reminiscent of a high-end salon rather than a medical clinic.
It can be reasonably assumed that the sole factor responsible for the discrepancy between the number of crisis pregnancy centres and abortion clinics in California is deception.
It can be reasonably assumed that the aforementioned half-truths are responsible for the apparent immunity of “antiabortion pregnancy centres” from any form of regulation, despite repeated attempts to impose such controls.
It is only by informing abortion-minded women of the fabricated consequences of abortion that it is possible to explain how some Pregnancy Help Centers are experiencing an increase in funding from donors who oppose the enhanced protections introduced in California in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
What factors contribute to the observed increase in the number of Pregnancy Help Centers? The industry has become increasingly challenging to regulate as it has evolved away from the egregious misrepresentations that initially defined it, according to Attorney General Rob Bonta. “They are entering a more nebulous and uncertain domain, where they are stating, for instance, that they are willing to engage in discussions about abortion options,” Bonta observed. It is not necessarily false, but rather may be misleading. However, it is not a clear-cut violation.
In essence, despite the considerable efforts of the California government, it has not been able to eradicate Pregnancy Help Centers.
The entire account is worthy of perusal. The most compelling response from pro-abortion Democrats is presented at the conclusion of Mays’s account.
She conducted an interview with Heidi Matzke, who has been identified as the figurehead of the contemporary pregnancy centre movement in California. [Italics added]:
Matzke is a tireless debater; for every scientific study that casts doubt on her services, she holds up another, more obscure study that supports them. It’s Planned Parenthood, not pregnancy centres, that judges its patients, she insists.
“They want to choose life, but they need help and they need support,” Matzke said of her clients. “And so when they find a clinic like ours that supports them … then a lot of them will step up and choose life.”
California’s leading Democratic lawmakers have ignored Matzke’s invitations to visit her clinics, wary of giving her cause a microphone. But the licence granted to her by the state they represent hangs prominently in her lobby, framed with gold tines to match her new decor.
“We have nothing to hide,” she says.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
