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Bait and Switch Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Bait and Switch Crisis Pregnancy Centers

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Ask your representative to support H.R.5052 Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act which requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to:

(1) promulgate rules prohibiting persons from advertising with the intent to deceptively create the impression that such persons provide abortion services; and (2) enforce violations of such rules as unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.

Even if you are pro-life/anti-choice, you should support this bill. There is no reason that CPCs can’t proudly advertise what they do offer. How about something like: “Thinking about an abortion? Come talk to us about the alternatives.”

Thanks to an investigation by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), we know exactly what they’re telling women. Female investigators called, saying they were pregnant, and recorded their conversations. 87% of CPCs provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion.

These centers, which are easily confused with full reproductive health and planning services, use neutral-sounding names and ads – but their agenda is very clear. They spread misinformation (let’s say “misinformation” instead of the more straightforward word, just to be nice) in order to dissuade women from having an abortion. They don’t offer abortion services at all.

It’s a services bait and switch.

Did you know that anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) have received $30 million of our tax dollars? According to the Guttmacher Institute, there are 2,500-4,000 centers nationwide, compared with about 1,800 abortion providers.

Take action to stop these clinics from deceiving women at their most vulnerable moments:

http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/crisis_clinics

(Planned Parenthood)

Reality will not be overthrown

Reality will not be overthrown

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The United States has, until now, been a (if not "the") world leader in scientific research and the development of technologies. This has been the backbone of public policies that navigate reality, and it has brought us our highish standard of living and our economy of relative priviledge. But I think we’re on the way out of that role. When ideologies replace knowledge, it is always the people who pay.

Certain fundamentalist groups, suspicious of all intellectuals, "eggheads," and independent thought, have moved us even further into a state of socio-pathology. Their effects on public policy, public higher education, biomedical research, family planning and sex education, environmental issues, the arts and humanities, freedom of inquiry, and even research funding for the common good are monumental, and I suspect that these effects will continue to feed into the sucking vortex of disaster created the skewed priorities of the neocons and crony corporatists.

This administration puts political interests above our well-being as a people. Knowledge and expertise has been pushed aside in favor of unqualified appointments (or those with clear conflicts of interest), the dissolution of advisory committees, and even censorship and suppression of reports from the government’s own scientists.

Across the board, "intelligence" (I use the term in its double meaning) is disregarded unless it supports a conclusion desired by power. There is nothing more deadly to truth than this. I believe such disregard is a substantial security risk that presents a clear and present danger to the American people. We are becoming a danger to ourselves as well as to others. There is still room in our current system for things to change. I hope that the momentum for such change is growing, and I hope that real leaders will emerge – soonest – in this nation’s time of need.

Way Beyond “Republican”…

Way Beyond “Republican”…

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Some people want to argue with me about the effects of this administration on this country. I say words are cheap, propaganda is more effective than it should be, and I judge by actions and evidence. What we are seeing is not a Republican agenda, but a wholesale reorganization of what America is all about. A must-read is Howard Zinn’s article in the Guardian, “It is not only Iraq that is occupied. America is too.”

I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.

More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong.

Starting a new category today called Alien-nation (from “American Idiot” by Green Day). If I have some extra time, I’ll go back and add the category to some archived posts. Meanwhile, here are the Alien-nation examples for today.

Depleted uranium – a weapon of mass destruction for all.

The KBR division of Halliburton, which is responsible for carrying out the no-bid Pentagon contracts, experienced a 284 percent increase in operating profits during the second quarter of this year, including $70 million in “award” fees. Although government auditors have repeatedly cited the company for apparent fraud, improper billing, bribery, and gross overcharging for services there, the administration (and our representatives) have ignored even the auditors’ requests to withhold a portion of payments to the company.

The Christian right was saved from dying out with the Bush administration’s tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to their grassroots organizations – while they starved out family planning and AIDS-related organizations. So much for separation of church and state.

From the Progress Report

D’OH FOR JOHN DOE: ” …playing to the interests of John Doe — belies a reality that Treasury Secretary John Snow recently acknowledged, “the fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally to less educated Americans.” A notable characteristic of  the recent economic growth is the “unusually uneven“ economic gains distribution: ”exceptionally fast growth in corporate profits [has been] coupled with exceptionally slow growth in wages and salaries.” In what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan referred to as “a very disturbing trend,” the income gap has widened to a chasm that “by some measures is the biggest in the United States since the Roaring ’20s.” Though infamous for his belief in the free-market, Greenspan testified to Congress that “a free market, democratic society is ill-served by an economy in which the rewards are distributed in a way” that excludes the majority. How much of the majority? According to the Labor Department, “the nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages [have] barely maintained their purchasing power.” Unfortunately, President Bush continues to champion his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, despite the fact that they “were too slanted toward upper earners to be particularly effective economic medicine.”