The picture on the cover of Time magazine shows the palm of a woman's hand. Placed within it are four tiny rubber fetuses. The magazine title and subtitle proclaim, "The abortion campaign you never heard about: Crisis pregnancy centers are working to win over one woman at a time. But are they playing fair?"
Well, it depends on who you ask.
Time has some positive things to say about the nation's 2,300 pregnancy resource centers. These clinics offer alternatives to abortion, information about fetal development, and material help for women who choose not to abort. But sad to say, Time also repeated a number of myths perpetrated by the abortion industry and its advocates.
For example, Time suggests that pregnancy resource centers, while willing to help mothers during pregnancy, are indifferent to their financial needs after their babies are born.
Not true: Pregnancy care centers often form long-term relationships with women, offering economic and other help years after the baby is born.
Time also quotes abortion advocates who claim that crisis pregnancy centers lie to women and traumatize them in an effort to coerce them into giving birth. Interestingly, Time did not quote any women who said that this had happened to them. The only people quoted were abortion advocates.
Even more telling are polls of those who use pregnancy care centers: One conducted by the Family Research Council revealed that women by overwhelming numbers had only positive things to say about how they were treated. So where are all the women who think they were treated badly?
Planned Parenthood leader Christopher Hollis tells Time that pregnancy care centers play a "dangerous game with women's lives." I have a question for Mr. Hollis: How many women have been killed by pregnancy care centers?
As far as I know, the answer is zero. Unfortunately, abortion clinics cannot make that same claim. Just ask the families of the women who have died at the hands of abortionists.
Are pregnancy care centers playing fair? That depends on where you stand. Clearly, the abortion industry thinks it's not fair that women are increasingly choosing childbirth over abortion. They think it's not fair that pregnancy care centers tell women the truth about the physical, emotional, and spiritual after-effects of abortion. They think it's not fair that pregnancy care centers are equipping themselves with ultrasound machines that allow women to see their tiny, unborn babies in action: a boy sucking his thumb, or a little girl turning somersaults.
America's abortion rate is at its lowest point since 1993. Clearly, the abortion industry is running scared. Pregnancy care centers — with compassion, mercy, and the truth — are changing the hearts of abortion-minded women.
As Christians, we know that we will be attacked for exposing evil to the light of day. During the latest rounds of attacks on pregnancy care centers, we need to be praying for and supporting those on the front lines of the abortion wars — people who are saving innocent lives one baby at a time.