Not objective

We wish to respond to Katie Mehne’s letter of Oct. 8, 1993, concerning the activities and funding of the Crisis Pregnancy Center. According to our information, which we consider to be reliable, the CPC is part of a network of anti-choice groups that receives part of its funding from conservative religious organizations.

The most important issue, however, is not the source of the funding, but the misrepresentation of themselves as an objective source of information about abortion. They are, by their own admission, antiabortion, and for this reason cannot possibly be an objective source about either the risks or the advantages of abortion. Although Ms. Mehne claims that the CPC’s brochures and videos are “fully documented” with materials from respected sources, the fact that CPC is so strongly antiabortion makes it inevitable that any material it presents about abortion will be distorted and inaccurate.

We want to emphasize again what we said in our original letter: the DeKalb County Health Department is the only agency in this community that provides neutral and medically informed information about abortion. Equally important, the trained medical personnel and counselors there will support women, no matter what choice they make concerning problem pregnancies. They will not try to pressure any woman into having an abortion. And, unlike the Crisis Pregnancy Center, they do not use scare tactics, distortions and misinformation to try to frighten women into continuing their pregnancies.

Judith Testa

Professor, School of Art

Rebecca Parfitt

Counselor/Advocate, Safe Passage