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| image via exposefakeclinics.com |
Although, as the Communist Manifesto observes, "The
executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie," the conflicts within the ruling class
and the pressure of activism have at times created opportunities for the state
or its branches to intervene on the side of the people. In the past, for instance, laws have provided
and the Supreme Court has affirmed the right to equal education and accommodation,
to voting rights, to access to contraception and abortion care.
At present, of course, things are different. In an interview on Truthout, Saqib Bhatti, co-director of the ActionCenter on Race and the Economy (ACRE), answers the title question of Whose Agenda is the SupremeCourt Carrying Out? by pointing to “the
corporate class” and “white supremacists.” In recent decisions the Court has upheld Trump’s Muslim ban,
taken away fair-share fees from public sector unions, and ruled that crisis
pregnancy centers can lie to people.
It’s the last of those decisions I want to give a bit more
attention today. It reflects longstanding organizing by the patriarchal
religious right, and it is also racist and a gift to capital power.
The religious right typically believes that sex for pleasure
without procreation is wrong. They fear
the possibility of losing the private, caring labor that mothers and other
women have historically provided, because they see no larger framework for communal care and social provisioning.
Thus, right wing groups in Oregon are hoping to put on the
November ballot a measure to amend the state constitution to ban using public
funds for health insurance that covers abortion.
Typically, CPCs offer free pregnancy testing (the sort of thing
you could find yourself at a pharmacy) and
sometimes they offer ultrasounds—especially in states where an ultrasound is
now required before an abortion. Sometimes
these centers provide referrals to social service agencies or themselves offer
some things like free baby clothing.
But a series of investigations reveal that they also frequently lie about the dangers of abortion, suggesting it
will lead to cancer, sterility, mental illness—none of which is true—in
fact abortion is one of the safest medical procedures. It's far safer than carrying a pregnancy to term, but fake clinics won't provide information about the dangers of pregnancy, or the fact that “childbirth is 14 times more likely than abortion to result in” the pregnant person's death.
These fake clinics may lie about the gestational age of a
fetus or the likelihood of miscarriage or the laws on reproductive care, all in
an effort to delay action until it is too late for a pregnancy to be
terminated. They may lie about the possibility that the birth of a child will
change an abusive partner into one who is not abusive. They may lie about the effectiveness of
contraception in protecting against pregnancy or sexually-transmitted
diseases. All such lies can of course be
dangerous to health. "Information-related delays in qualified healthcare negatively affect [not only] women seeking to terminate
their pregnancies [but also] women carrying their pregnancies to term, with
delays in qualified prenatal care causing life-long health problems for infants.”
Moreover, these fake clinics are often targeted at low-income
women and women of color, who are at greater risk of maternal mortality and
morbidity when they do give birth. And
these centers are five times more numerous than are clinics that actually provide abortions.
But these fake clinics have had support from lawmakers, who
in some states have provided public funding for them or have mandated they be
included among the referrals provided to those who are pregnant.
In response, a number of jurisdictions have passed laws that
prevent misleading advertising and that require CPCs to disclose the limited
nature of the services they actually provide. Becerra is the attorney general of the state of
California, which in 2015 passed the Reproductive Freedom, Accountability,
Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act. California’s FACT Act required unlicensed
centers to post notice of their unlicensed status, and required licenced
centers to post visible notices that free or low-cost abortion, contraception,
and prenatal care are available to low-income women through public programs,
and to provide the phone number for more information.
NIFLA challenged the act on the grounds that it violated the
right to free speech in some way that is not true of laws requiring doctors to
tell pregnant people that their "unborn child is a whole human life that
was a human life at conception."
The so-called informed consent laws requiring such a statement—that one’s from Missouri—were upheld in the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Planned
Parenthood v Casey, which held they did not violate the first amendment (even
though currently some of them may be unfounded and unscientific, like that one from Missouri).
Clarence Thomas’s argument for the Supreme Court’s majority decision
suggests that it’s okay to allow the fake clinics to lie because they aren’t
really providing medical services, wheras real clinics that do provide medical
services can be compelled to provide scripted information (even dubious
information).
But as Justice Breyer notes in his dissent, “If a State can lawfully require a doctor to tell a woman
seeking an abortion about adoption services, why should it not be able, as
here, to require a medical counselor to tell a woman seeking prenatal care or other reproductive
healthcare about childbirth and abortion services?"
Breyer’s dissenting opinion, in which he is joined by the
three women on the court, Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, dissects in legal
detail the many problems with the majority opinion.
Aside from the problems a layperson might notice,
Breyer also points out that the grounding Thomas provides for the majority
opinion not only ignores information provided to the court, draws on less-than-relevant
case law while ignoring more relevant precedent, and rests on distinctions that
lack “moral, practical, and legal force.”
The majority’s approach also, Breyer notes, “in suggesting that heightened scrutiny applies to much
economic and social legislation,” places “ordinary disclosure laws” and “much
securities law or consumer protection law at constitutional risk,” and “at the
least threatens considerable litigation over the constitutional validity of
much, perhaps most, government regulation.”
That is, like Citzens United and debates on college campuses, this
decision is part of the right-wing project of weaponizing the notion of free
speech against the interests of the vulnerable majority.
The decision not only makes it legal for these fake clinics to lie to their clients, it also sets up a ruling that may lead to challenge and overruling of other laws that require companies provide customers with adequate and truthful information.
The decision not only makes it legal for these fake clinics to lie to their clients, it also sets up a ruling that may lead to challenge and overruling of other laws that require companies provide customers with adequate and truthful information.
Imani Gandy at ReWire suggests one place that invitation to litigation is likely to
show up soon is in right-wing challenges to attempts at banning so-called
conversion therapy—since it's no more deceptive to say that beating a kid will make
them not be gay than it is to say that an abortion will give you breast cancer. Neither is true, but those currently in power don’t seem to
think these lies should be illegal.
In short, and not surprisingly at this point, although
California may and should come back with a rewritten FACT Act, we can’t rely only
on the legal system to address the problem of fake clinics and women’s needs
for reproductive care.
Fortunately, there are informational and activist resources
available online.
The site “expose fake clinics dot com” has a wealth of resources including a database
of fake clinics, organized by state—and the listing includes some in Portland and the
surrounding area. The activists who made the site propose providing Yelp reviews for local fake clinics, alerting Yelp users to the real
scoop. The site “ReproAction dot org”
has more suggestions about what to do about fake clinics in your area; they
offer a webinar and a direct action toolkit for organizing protests
at fake clinics, speak-outs and teach-ins involving those who have been
victimized by these groups, and getting the word out through letters to the
editor, op-eds, and petitions for investigation into use of public funds.
Some folks with the local feminist caucus of the Demoratic
Socialists of America have taken an interest in this issue, so that would also
be a place to find out more and connect with others interested in exposing fake
clinics.
It's probably not a bad idea to learn menstrual extraction and other useful skills, but perhaps that's a discussion for another day.
