When abortion clinics close and pro-choice PRCs open
Today’s blog post is co-written by Monica Snyder and Virginia Pride.
What do abortion clinics do when abortion is banned?
When Roe vs Wade was overturned by Dobbs in 2022, several states had “trigger laws” which automatically restricted abortions beyond certain gestations. Many abortion clinics offer other services such as contraception and STD testing, but typically the primary source of income is abortion itself. Laws that banned or significantly restricted abortions meant clinics’ main source of income was no longer legal. In response, many have closed.
However, some locations saw these changes as a new opportunity. In Anti-Abortion Playbook, Flipped: Arkansas Abortion Fund Opens Its Own “Crisis Pregnancy Center”, Laura Morel writes about abortion workers and activists in pro-life states shifting focus to help women with other choices, such as parenting and adoption. Some of them are working out of the same spaces that once housed abortion clinics.
From the space that once housed the Little Rock abortion clinic emerged the state’s only pro-choice pregnancy resource center: the YOU Center.
We’ve previously pointed out that pro-life laws should be no threat to Planned Parenthood if it’s true that abortion is only 3% of what they do. We said this tongue-in-cheek, but if pro-choicers respond to abortion bans by offering more resources and options through pro-choice pregnancy resources centers (PRCs), we’re here for it.
Re-thinking what it means to be “pro-choice”
In Arkansas, Karen Musick once volunteered as a clinic escort. After Dobbs, the clinic owner allows Musick and others to work from the location helping women travel for abortions out of state. But they also expanded services beyond facilitating abortions:
The YOU Center has adopted the crisis pregnancy center model…Staff at the Center mail out emergency contraceptives and contraception to residents throughout the state. They keep a closet stocked with supplies like menstrual products, baby formula, and prenatal vitamins. The sonographer who worked at the Little Rock clinic for 20 years now offers free ultrasounds to date pregnancies.
Musick explains: “We’re trying to make sure that people in our state know that we’re the ones who give people choice.”
Pro-lifers often argue that there’s no difference between “pro-choice” and “pro-abortion.” By their own descriptions, these pro-choicers acknowledge their work for “choice” used to be narrower. Forest Beeley, director of a pro-choice PRC in Indiana, emphasizes the importance of empowerment not only for abortion, but for birth plans, adoption, and grappling with infertility. Beeley’s center counseling on pregnancy, parenting, adoption, and abortion.
Since Roe fell, a lot of people are seeing how all of those aspects of pregnancy and birthing and parenthood are just so interconnected.
But why did it take Roe falling for pro-choicers to consider these other choices?
This combination of pregnancy support alongside abortion is also found in Ohio. JustChoice was founded by Molly Rampe Thomas in 2010. It began as an adoption agency that also counseled on parenting and abortion options. Thomas explains
We’ve always said, the only way you can create a safe and ethical adoption plan is if a pregnant person is offered all options available to them.
We agree with this. It would be unethical for a mother to feel pushed into adoption without being aware of resources for other options. We hope pro-choice people recognize the same principle should apply to women considering abortion.
JustChoice has since expanded to offer hosting for people with housing insecurity and a mutual aid fund for people with financial struggles. Their work got Dr. Catherine Romanos, an abortion provider, thinking about other ways than abortion to help pregnant women and parents. She says,
The abortion space is about abortion. I have to participate in helping people much earlier on.
Competing to offer women more resources
The people organizing pro-choice PRCs view pro-life PRCs with suspicion and hostility. They often believe our PRCs try to stop women from getting abortions through deception and manipulation. (There are many myths about PRCs that go unexamined and unchallenged.)
These misconceptions are unfortunate. I suspect if people working in pro-choice versus pro-life PRCs could lower defenses enough to get to know each other, they’d find they have a lot in common. Yes, we vehemently disagree on the ethics of abortion. But we agree on connecting vulnerable populations to resources related to myriad other issues: homelessness, addiction, domestic violence, food insecurity, education and employment access, the list goes on. We strongly agree that no woman should ever be seeking abortion because she feels she has no choice. There are opportunities out there where we could be stepping away from partisanship toward collaboration.
But until that fateful day, at least the abortion supporters are channeling their prejudices in helpful ways. The All-Options clinic, which has offered significant resources to women since 2015, was founded in part to defeat pro-lifers:
All-Options, for instance, opened a center in 2015 after receiving an infusion of cash from a generous donor who wanted to see a pro-choice organization “counteract the harm that crisis pregnancy centers were doing in our communities,” Beeley says. “Everybody who are pregnant and parenting deserves unconditional support, not stigma in any capacity.”
Similarly, JustChoice was “hearing stories about pregnant people whose only option for an early ultrasound was a [pro-life] crisis pregnancy center.” In response, the pro-choice PRC started offering their own free ultrasounds. So Ohio is now seeing groups competing to see who can offer more women free ultrasounds?
I can think of worse outcomes.
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