Dear Friends,
Last week, the Massachusetts state government announced their “first-in-the-nation” effort to scare pregnant women away from Pregnancy Resource Centers throughout our state. With our governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and other state officials, the Department of Public Health launched what it called an “education campaign” to highlight “the dangers and potential harm” of crisis pregnancy centers. These organizations support pregnant women, particularly women in desperate situations and who may be considering abortion. They also offer direct material support to infants and children and social-emotional and parenting support to men, all free of charge because of private donations.
Pro-abortion advocates persistently criticize such centers for what they claim are misleading tactics. The government’s campaign will “amplify how anti-abortion centers provide misinformation about abortion services to prevent people from making an informed choice about their care,” the Department of Public Health said.
Pro-life advocates in Massachusetts criticized the government’s campaign. The Pregnancy Care Alliance of Massachusetts, which works to educate the public about pregnancy centers, said the state’s network of pregnancy centers “provides millions of dollars in no-cost support and care for thousands of women annually who face planned and unplanned pregnancies.”
“The women served by pregnancy resource centers overwhelmingly report a positive experience,” the statement said. “Yet the [Gov. Maura] Healey administration and other politicians in the state are furthering their extreme abortion agenda by using a taxpayer-funded campaign to discredit our centers. The politically motivated campaign will negatively impact women the most, specifically the many women who want to parent and rely on the free assistance we provide.” These are women who want to choose to parent.
According to Mass Citizens for Life, in recent years pregnancy resource centers have faced mounting pressure from the state, hindering their ability to offer a life-affirming choice effectively to women. They point to one reason: Pregnancy resource centers threaten the abortion industry’s bottom line.
The group’s president, Myrna Flynn, accurately states that “honoring the dignity of the human person is as central to the pro-life movement as it is to Catholic social teaching. In their commitment to support vulnerable women by offering a myriad of cost-free, life-affirming services, Massachusetts’ pregnancy resource centers elevate and seek to preserve a woman’s dignity above all else.”
Flynn noted that in Massachusetts there have been “no complaints of merit filed against our PRCs [pregnancy resource centers]” and that for decades “tens of thousands of Bay State women received the help they desired inside these critical community treasures.”
“So for Gov. Healey, who describes herself as a Catholic, to direct $1 million of taxpayer money to an effort that is strategically designed to steer women away from PRCs and into abortion clinics instead effectively conveys one message: In this state, politically-generated abortion revenue matters more than women, their dignity, and the very lives of their children,” she said.
Every person has the right to truthful information. Pregnant women are no exception. In this and other recent actions, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is providing untruthful statements with the intent of limiting women’s right to choose life. Yes, the state’s actions are anti-choice when it comes to life. We cannot stand for that. We stand for the truth, that all people, unborn and born, are made in the image and likeness of God and are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In Christ,
Fr. Jim