Full Frontal Feminism_ A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters - Jessica Valenti [32]
ABORTION CAUSES BREAST CANCER
Abortion doesn’t cause breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have all said as much. Yet another very smart lie by the anti-choice, anti-sex sect. In reality, having a baby is actually more dangerous to your health than having an abortion. But that hasn’t stopped anti-choicers from spreading misinformation and even trying to get legislation passed that would require telling women who want abortions that they’re increasing their chance of getting breast cancer. Can you say “scare tactic”?
POST-ABORTION SYNDROME
Yet another fake term. It’s not recognized by the scientific or medical communities. The idea is that women who have had abortions suffer mental trauma after the procedure. The truth of the “syndrome” is just more wordplay. It flips the script for the anti-choice movement. So many people see anti-choice activists as violent protesters that talking about a syndrome makes it seem like they care about women and their health. (If that were true, perhaps they wouldn’t make shit up.) Again and again, studies have shown that women don’t suffer mentally after an abortion. Naturally, different women will have different emotions after the procedure, but it seems to me that the stigmas attached to abortion (and having people scream that you’re a murderer) would be contributing factors in all of this. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association says that “government restrictions on abortion are more likely to cause women lasting harm than the procedure itself.”8
PREGNANCY CRISIS CENTERS
This is probably the worst of the anti-choice lies. “Pregnancy crisis centers” have been set up all over the country; in fact, there are more anti-choice crisis centers than health clinics that offer abortion. Basically, the centers tout themselves as women’s health clinics and lead women to believe that they offer abortion and birth control services. Of course, they don’t. Essentially, they’re there to intimidate or trick women into remaining pregnant. They have two strategies to do this. Sometimes they tell women that they don’t have any more appointments and she should call back. They continue to put her off—maybe even schedule an abortion and then cancel—until she is too far along in the pregnancy to have a legal abortion. Other anti-choice crisis centers will simply bully women. Writer/feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte tells one girl’s story:
❂ According to a recent Planned Parenthood email, a seventeen-year-old girl mistakenly walked into a crisis pregnancy center thinking it was Planned Parenthood, which was next door. The group took down the girl’s confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their “other office” (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby).
When she showed up for her nonexistent appointment, she was met by the police, who had been erroneously tipped that a minor was being forced to abort. The crisis pregnancy center staff followed up this harassment by staking out the girl’s house, phoning her father at work, and even talking to her classmates about her pregnancy, urging them to harass her.9
Oh, and by the way—your taxes pay for these places. Sit on that one for a while.
WE’RE PROTECTING THE CHILDREN!
Another big fat lie is that anti-choicers are just trying to protect children from scary child molesters and abortionists. The biggest proponent of this bullshittery is former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who, until 2006, was on a one-man crusade to make sure that teens didn’t screw—I mean, are protected.
While in office (he was voted out in 2006),