Editorial: The extraordinary attack on pro-life pregnancy centers

In the aftermath of the June 24 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, perhaps nothing has so perfectly encapsulated the inarticulate rage against America’s pro-life community as the targeting of pro-life pregnancy centers. 

Not only have they been the target, across more than 20 states, of vandalism, firebombing, or threats of violence, they have also been denounced by governors and U.S. senators. In some places, laws have been proposed targeting these facilities. Members of Congress have pressured Internet search giant Google to doctor its search results and ads to suppress them. And of course there has been plenty of biased media coverage joining in the pile-on. 

What makes it all of this so extraordinary and bizarre is simply what these facilities do. Consider, for example, the Lake Superior Life Care Center in Duluth and Superior. Their website lists client services like these: classes on pregnancy, birth and delivery, infant care, toddlers, and parenting; free pregnancy tests; free OB ultrasounds; two clinic days a month offering free medical services, including physicals, prenatal exams, labs, X-rays, and mammograms; and material assistance to help with baby needs, including items like diapers, wipes, formula, clothing, strollers, and high chairs. 

The world would be a better place with more such places rather than fewer and if their budgets were multiplied rather than drained by vandals and hostile politicians and if more mothers in need knew about them rather than fewer. By any objective standard, these facilities are the sort of thing people of a broad spectrum of views about abortion should be able to come together and support. 

So it beggars the imagination how even the most vehement advocate of legal abortion could look at the landscape of American pro-life activism, with all its many facets, and choose crisis pregnancy centers — the places that exist to help women in difficult circumstances get the resources they need to choose life for their children — as the focal point of hatred and intimidation. 

For decades the lie has persisted that the pro-life community only cares about children before they’re born. How extraordinary, then, that so much anger has been directed toward the very people in the pro-life community for whom that is most plainly untrue. 

Please do your part to support pro-life pregnancy centers, with your prayers and with your donations. They deserve it.