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Washington, D.C., November 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The nation’s most aggressive abortion advocacy group just finished up what they called “a week of action” aimed at shutting down pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that offer help and resources – but not abortions – to mothers facing unplanned pregnancies.

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NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League) asked its supporters to spend the week of Nov. 11-18 doing everything possible to smear the reputation of crisis pregnancy centers, which they call “fake clinics” because they do not perform abortions.

“'Crisis pregnancy centers' (CPCs) are fake clinics set up by anti-choice organizations with a mission to deceive and shame women to deter them considering abortion,” said Ilyse Hogue, NARAL’s president, in a statement

Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal accused CPCs of lying about the risks of abortion. “Fake clinics hurt women by giving them false information, such as abortion leading to breast cancer – which is simply not true,” Smeal claimed. 

Both women urged NARAL’s supporters to “spread the word” about CPCs and their alleged “lies” about the risks of abortion by flooding user review website Yelp with negative reviews for CPCs – an action called “astroturfing” that actually violates some state laws.  (New York, for example, recently cracked down on the practice, forcing 19 offenders to pay more than $350,000 in fines for posting fake reviews aimed at bolstering or ruining businesses’ reputations online.)

The group also asked supporters to Tweet or post on Tumblr photos of themselves exposing the so-called “lies” of CPCs – including physical risks of the abortion procedure (including perforated bowels), the abortion-breast cancer link, links between cancer and birth control, and the failure of condoms to completely block STDs – and download a series of images to post on Facebook and other social media with the hashtag “#truthfail.”

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While NARAL claimed crisis pregnancy centers’ information on the risks of abortion and contraceptives are “lies,” the group made no effort to verify any of the relatively outlandish claims made by its supporters on social media, like one woman who claimed she was told by a CPC that “college would be free” if she had a baby. 

However, many of the statements the group highlighted as alleged falsehoods are actually scientifically verifiable facts.  

Studies around the world have linked abortion to an increased risk of breast cancer, including in the United States, where National Cancer Institute researcher Dr. Louise Brinton and her colleagues acknowledged in 2009 that women who chose to end their pregnancies develop breast cancer at a 40 percent higher rate than those who give birth.  The same study found that oral contraceptive use roughly tripled the risk of certain breast cancers in women, especially aggressive cancers in very young women.  

And the risks of surgical abortion have been well-documented both in medical literature and in the press. A late-term abortionist featured in a Salon profile once infamously said, “There are only two kinds of doctors who have never perforated a uterus, those that lie and those who don’t do abortions.”  Other injury risks include severed arteries, perforated bowels, and infections from improperly sterilized surgical equipment.

“NARAL and other pro-abortion organizations seem to want women to consume dangerous contraceptive drugs their entire lives, have as much risky sex as possible, and kill their unborn children if they ever become pregnant,” wrote Adam Cassandra of Human Life International, in response to a NARAL video attacking CPCs for “lying.” “[N]either science nor logic will interfere with their radical agenda.”

“CPCs offer a valuable service to women, but because the resources they provide contradict the pro-abortion narrative, they must be attacked,” added Cassandra. “That NARAL failed so miserably in their attempt to ‘expose’ CPCs but went ahead and publicized their failure anyway shows not only that their organization, but their ‘movement’ is truly desperate.”