Panel to iron out differences in crisis pregnancy bill

05/20/2005

Jean Hopfensperger, Star Tribune
May 19, 2005

Tianna Harris was 21, a mother of three, and ready to abort her fourth pregnancy when she accidentally walked in to the Robbinsdale Women’s Center, a crisis pregnancy center.

The staff there told her about some alternatives, and offered an ultrasound. “I could see the eyes, the hands, and the baby sucking its thumb,” said Harris, who changed her mind. “Without them, I wouldn’t have my baby.”

Anne Halverson was a frightened 19-year-old when she made an appointment for a pregnancy test at Birthright in downtown Minneapolis. The test came back positive, but Halverson said her experience was negative.

“They made me feel like I’d done something bad, and the only way to fix the situation was to have the baby,” she said.

The young women’s reactions dramatize the tension behind the Positive Alternatives Act, a bill that has passed both houses of the Legislature, with some differences between the two versions. The bill would, for the first time, give state funding to crisis pregnancy groups that oppose abortion.

Supporters say the bill would reduce abortions by giving women practical help and support as they grapple with unplanned pregnancies. Critics charge that such centers have given women inaccurate information, and that the centers don’t measure up to professional standards.

The bill represents a new strategy for abortion opponents in Minnesota, and nationally. Minnesota’s bill would help fund a network of about 100 crisis pregnancy groups dedicated to ending abortion. Staffed mainly by volunteers, the centers typically offer counseling, pregnancy testing and some help with baby clothes and other essentials. Some do more, others less.

Robbinsdale center

The Robbinsdale Women’s Center is located across the street from the Robbinsdale Clinic, which performs abortions. About once a week, a woman expecting to have an abortion winds up at the door of the women’s center, said Peggy Benicke, its director. Harris was one of them. The young mother was driving around in search of the abortion clinic. She called directory assistance on her cell phone, and was given the address of the women’s center. She arrived frazzled and “starving”; the clinic had told her not to eat before the abortion.

“They [staff at the women’s center] started talking to me, saying there were alternatives to abortion,” Harris recalled. “And they offered me food. I’m thinking, ‘When is the doctor coming in?’ “

But after talking with a counselor, watching videos on fetal development, and getting an ultrasound, Harris changed her mind—and ate a sandwich.

That was three years ago. Now she’s the mother of a 2-year-old girl.

Harris stopped by the center last week just to visit. The office where she got her ultrasound was a few steps away. And downstairs was the so-called “store,” with racks of baby clothes, some cribs and blankets. Women can earn “baby bucks” to purchase them.

Gina Myers has earned baby bucks by reading up on baby care, motherhood and “how God helps and provides,” she said. This week she turned in homework on how to feed a baby, and then she picked up some sleepers. Said Myers: “They’ve been excellent ... helpful and understanding.”

Critics charge bias

But the Minnesota attorney general’s office has received at least eight complaints against the center from women seeking abortions who inadvertently walked through its doors.

The women complained that they were never informed they weren’t at the abortion clinic. Some said they were encouraged to have an ultrasound or to speak with an anti-abortion counselor. One woman complained that she gave center workers personal information never intended for them. The experience was confusing, they said, and for some—traumatic.

Copies of the complaints, and the attorney general’s response, promising to refer the complaints to the appropriate agencies, were given to legislators by NARAL-ProChoice Minnesota.

Meanwhile Halverson’s concern at Birthright was that counselors urged her to have her baby without knowing—or asking—about her life situation.

“She didn’t ask me if I had a job, a place to raise the child, she didn’t ask me anything about my personal life,” Halvorson said. “I had no money. I was moving place to place. I didn’t know how my parents would react.

“And there was a booklet on abortions,” she added. “It said that I’d increase my risk of breast cancer, that I might never be able to have another child, that I might catch an infection—and there is a risk of death with that infection. The information was misleading.”

Rosemary Rockwell, a spokeswoman for Minnesota’s 24 Birthright centers, said that she didn’t recall the brochures but that the risks Halvorson mentioned are legitimate. As for no one asking Halvorson about her personal story, that “seemed strange,” she said.

“Before we do anything, we talk about what’s going on in their lives,” Rockwell said. “We ask about their support system ... about their relationship with the father ... about obstacles to having the baby.”

But Gillian Korpi, a former volunteer counselor at Birthline in St. Cloud, an organization separate from Birthright, said she left the organization this year because women weren’t given “the whole picture.”

“My concern was that we were ... steering them [women] down a path,” said Korpi, “that we were acting like we were operating like a medical clinic, when we weren’t. It was frustrating because I know the statistics on poverty and teen pregnancy. And a lot of the services we were referring to were short term. It was not giving them the whole picture on what the future would hold.”

The Senate version of the bill addresses some of the critics’ concerns: It removes language allowing only groups whose “sole purpose” is to end abortion to be eligible for funding. And it requires the centers to protect clients’ privacy. The differences will be worked out in a conference committee.