Forget Planned Parenthood, anti-abortion programs harm women

Our government scrutinizes federal funding for objective women’s health organizations like Planned Parenthood — yet overlooks state funding for anti-abortion programs.

The hypocrisy is palpable.

Real Alternatives — a nonprofit, which provides alternatives to abortion, based in Harrisburg with a five-year, $30.2 million grant with the state of Pennsylvania —  has bypassed intensive government attention for the past 19 years.

According to an article published Monday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Eugene DePasquale, Pennsylvania’s auditor general, began hearing “concerns” about the program’s promotion of religion this summer. He intends to announce an audit of Real Alternatives this month.

The Post-Gazette uncovered discrepancies between the mission statement and advertised services of Harrisburg’s Morning Star Pregnancy Services, a Real Alternatives provider. In several brochures the Post-Gazette gathered, Real Alternatives providers spread medical information about abortions that medical specialists had refuted. Real Alternatives providers stated that abortions increased the risk of developing breast cancer and led to a decrease in emotional health — assertions that research has debunked.

This revelation comes several weeks after a national debate on the merits of Planned Parenthood — during which Congress threatened to shut down the government if funding for Planned Parenthood continued.

The spread of misinformation by anti-abortion providers isn’t just a problem in our backyard.

A fall 2006 Guttmacher Policy Review examined state abortion counseling material throughout the United States.

The Review discovered that five states falsely asserted a possible link between breast cancer and abortion. Seven states falsely asserted strictly negative emotional responses. Materials from five states included information on the ability of a fetus to feel pain. Inaccurate material led to decisions the review termed “Misinformed Consent.”

Informed consent — our right to receive accurate, unbiased information regarding medical care — is not just a principle of medical ethics, but a national law.

If the audit on Real Alternatives uncovers manipulative practices and the spread of misinformation, it wouldn’t be unprecedented — Rep. Henry Waxman of California released a report in 2006 citing 20 of the 23 centers his investigators visited as “providing false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion.”

The Center for Medical Progress accuses Planned Parenthood of selling fetal tissue, and we spring to attack. Women complain for years that anti-abortion organizations spread misinformation, preach Christian ideology and use “manipulative practices,” yet we’re oblivious to their very presence.

Planned Parenthood may be the flashier target, but it’s the wrong mark.