ST. LOUIS, Missouri, August 28, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) bashes pro-life pregnancy centers, places that protect the tiniest of human beings, for allegedly presenting “false and misleading information” to women.
In the article, Dr. Rita Rubin mentions the findings about crisis pregnancy centers of an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Georgia College of Public Health, Dr. Andrea Swartzendruber.
“Georgia pregnancy resources centers' websites contain false and misleading health information,” the article alleges.
“Virtually all of them advertised pregnancy testing and counseling about options,” it read. “However, 58 percent failed to mention that they did not provide or refer for abortion, while 53 percent included false or misleading statements, such as inflated statistics about the chance of a miscarriage and links between abortion and future health problems.”
There is a host of evidence supporting the link between abortion and future health problems such as breast cancer, preterm birth, and miscarriage.
Elsewhere, the article refers to Dr. Amy Bryant, who has claimed crisis pregnancy centers are unethical.
But Nancy Valko, a spokesperson for the National Association of Pro-Life Nurses, said the American Medical Association is simply playing politics with that article, which it has so far published in two of its publications.
“They're extremely liberal and they go by the polls,” Valko said in an interview. “They see more people are for abortion than against it.”
Although the AMA was once against abortion, it changed its position in 1970 after a few American states legalized it, just before Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which legalized abortion on demand in the U.S.
“I remember how upset many doctors were with the AMA after Roe v. Wade and many dropped out of the AMA,” wrote Valko on her blog. “Now, there are over one million MDs in the [U.S.] but less than 25 percent of practicing doctors are members of the AMA, down from 75 percent in the 1950s. (This is not just because of abortion but also the politics of the AMA.)”
“The AMA today now stands firmly for abortion rights and even against common sense conscience rights protection,” she explained.
According the career nurse, many of the criticisms levelled against crisis pregnancy centers in the JAMA article – including the allegation that these centers overplay the dangers of abortion – are simply untrue.
“They say we exaggerate it but I've seen the effects of abortion,” she said. “I've known women who have had abortions.”
Years ago, Valko cared for an 80-year-old woman suffering through the final stages of congestive heart failure. Fluid had built up in her stomach and it was distended and needed to be measured regularly. As Valko measured her patient one day, the elderly woman remarked she looked like she was pregnant. And then, she added she felt her suffering was a punishment for an abortion she'd had 60 years before.
Wracked with guilt and a sense of loss, she confided to Valko that even the legalization of abortion had not helped her forgive herself for that abortion.
“She said, ‘I know I've aborted the only little boy I ever had,’” recalled Valko.
Other women who have had abortions and later become pregnant were sometimes shocked when they learned about the prenatal stages of human development, said the nurse.
It's a reaction she says pregnant women who visit crisis pregnancy centers share when they see ultrasounds of their preborn babies.
“Seventy-eight percent of women change their minds about abortion at the crisis pregnancy centers when they get the ultrasound,” she said. “They're just looking at the truth.”
Despite the powerful impact ultrasounds can often have on pregnant women at crisis pregnancy centers, the JAMA article refers to these ultrasounds as medically unnecessary in the first trimester and “emotional manipulation.”
However, ultrasounds are a regular part of medical care during pregnancy, with OBGYNs typically performing them at around six or eight weeks to confirm the baby’s heartbeat and that the pregnancy is not ectopic, and again roughly once a month during a normal pregnancy.
The article in the medical journal also criticizes crisis pregnancy centers for not offering birth control, something Valko says is unnecessary.
“They're called crisis pregnancy centers,” she said. “They're already pregnant. They're not going to need birth control.”
Nearly half of all women experiencing unintended pregnancies were taking hormonal contraception, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.