CPCs: We’re protecting women as “an adult tells a child not to to touch a hot stove.”

Over the course of the three days of the conference, I chatted with a few dozen pregnancy center workers. Multiple women told me it was their job to protect women from abortion as “an adult tells a child not to touch a hot stove.”

Over at Cosmo, Meaghan Winter reports back from the Heartbeat International conference, where staff from the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers in the US shared tips for how best to trick and manipulate people out of choosing abortion.

Crisis pregnancy centers’ deceitful tactics are well-known at this point (most recently documented by NARAL Pro-Choice California) but Winter’s piece is still revealing in showing how utterly shameless they are about using whatever means they can — masquerading as abortion clinics with false advertising, telling countless lies about the risks of abortion and contraception — to achieve their goals. It also underscores that their goal isn’t limited to discouraging abortion; opposition to premarital sex, contraception, and abortion encompass a “whole worldview where all beliefs are interlocked.”

I think many, if not most, CPC workers are true believers — they actually think that they’re acting as “servants of Christ” in doing this work. But good intentions don’t change the fact that using deception to interfere with other people’s reproductive choices — choices with incredibly serious, life-altering consequences — is deeply immoral.

Header image credit: Exposing Fake Clinics Tumblr