Last Monday, Katie Distler, one of the Cornell Daily Sun’s colunists, wrote a very nasty article on crisis pregnancy centers. Calling them “religious centers with an anti-choice agenda”, she declares:

“At these centers, women receive a variety of “counseling” which involves watching videos of aborted babies, very often against the woman’s will, promises of financial aid if they keep their baby and religious pamphlets that decry the termination of a pregnancy. A lot of the “facts” that are given to women at these centers about abortions are not only misleading, but many are just downright false. . . .”Some women have reported that they have felt “mentally raped” after leaving the center, which can result in depression, shame and guilt. If women fail to receive the proper care and counseling that they deserve, the threats to both their physical and mental health increase greatly.”

Mentally raped?

My favorite quote came near the end however:

“To be morally opposed to abortion is one thing. To impose those views on another human being and telling her that she cannot control what goes on in her own body is a completely different issue.”

Yeah, that’s the problem. We’re not only morally opposed to abortion, but we’re actually going to do something about it. Didn’t senator Kerry say something that faith without works is dead?

Fortunately, a pro-life student wrote a great response to Distler’s article in Friday’s edition of the Cornell Daily Sun:

” Katie Distler wrote a lovely denunciation of crisis pregnancy centers. The only difficulty is, the centers she describes — anti-abortion indoctrination centers for the mentally vulnerable — are strictly figements of her imagination.”The pregnancy center I volunteered at this summer — Birthright of Ithaca, down by the railroad tracks — is typical of those across the country. Sure, we are all pro-lifers. We are there because we believe passionately that there is a better way than abortion, that women in trouble — told there is only one way out — need to be given real options, so they can make choices they can live with. Policy is very strict — never to pretend to be anything other than we are, never to “lure” anyone in under the assumption we provide abortions, and never to show pictures of aborted babies.

“People come because they want what we have to offer.

“One young mother stuck out to me in particular. She came many times. Why? Wasn’t she scared to be in a place where people might force their opinions on her? No, she came because it was the only place, among the many agencies she received help from, where she felt she was cared about — as a person. And I understood, because I felt it too whenever I came to work — the completely unjudgmental, totally welcoming atmosphere. The world is a cold place sometimes, especially for women facing unwanted pregnancies. As a society, we need to support them. And I’m grateful that crisis pregnancy centers do just that.”