In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Lying: It’s the Pro-Life Way

Jill

Well this is special.

I work in a call center for prescription meds. A woman called thinking we were her health care, and she asked if abortions are covered.

I didn’t tell her we were not the right company, I just said, “I’ll take your baby.”

She said, “What?”

“I’ll take your baby and adopt it for my own, please don’t kill your daughter.”

She got mad and said,”Lady, I don’t need no preachin’. Just give me the information.”

So I said, “Well, you’ll have to call a different number,” and then I gave her the number of the local Care Net crisis pregnancy center.

I figure if Rahab was honored for lying to save the Israelite spies in Jericho, then I can take liberties with the truth to save a life, too.

I hope whoever the caller was contacts this person’s supervisor and gets her fired. If your job is to give people information about prescription meds, it’s totally outside of your job description to send them to a crisis pregnancy center under the guise of giving them information about their insurance company. It’s also pretty odd to think that giving someone a CPC phone number = saving a life.

30 thoughts on Lying: It’s the Pro-Life Way

  2. How does she know for sure she’s saving a life? She doesn’t have all the information – the woman who called could know she has a health condition that would prevent her from safely carrying to term, the woman could have an abusive partner who would hurt her for being pregnant, the woman could decide an unsafe illegal abortion is her only choice after being harassed by what she thought was her medical care provider and the CPC.

    Heck, just going by case-rate fatalities, carrying to term and giving birth are eleven times more dangerous than having a (safe, legal) abortion. How does our “pro-life” phone-answerer magically know the woman won’t become another statistic, won’t develop preeclamsia, or a molar pregnancy? How does she know the fetus won’t develop fatal abnormalities?

    I’m sick to death of “pro-life” self-congratulatory backpatting. “Hooray, I saved a baby by lying”, “Hooray, we’re saving unborn babies by cutting funds to any family planning agency that even mentions abortion”, without any regard for the actual consequences of these actions.

  3. Ugh. I had to call my insurance company to see if they covered abortion when my much wanted pregnancy had ended due to severe fetal deformities. I’m SO glad that I didn’t get this horrible person on the phone… I was enough of an emotional wreck as it was. I hope she gets fired. Disgusting.

  4. You know, for supposedly being on the side of the righteous and pure, they sure do employ a lot of under-handed and downright dishonest tactics. Funny, I was taught that there was a commandment about that. Something about bearing false witness. Sure, I haven’t set foot in a church in years, but I do recall a few things.

    Oh, but as I made the mistake of clicking the link, I see Jill Stanek saying that apparently the Bible is full of people who were blessed for lying. …really, it’s too early for this crap.

  5. I’m probably weird for picking this out of that story, but it did stick out at me: where did she get “daughter” from? It seems unlikely that that would’ve come up in the time it took for her to figure out what the caller wanted. “Hello [my health care provider], I’m pregnant, it’d be a girl but don’t worry about it because I want an abortion, which is why I’m calling you, my health care provider — what do you mean, you’ll adopt my baby? Who asked you?”

    Oh, what the hell. God probably told her. In the same way he conveniently made sure that the woman seeking an abortion would use double negatives and drop her G’s, contrasting with the flawless grammar and diction of the saintly phone receptionist and handily clearing up the question of who is best equipped to make this decision, thank you very much, and who should just shut up and be grateful no one’s stoning her, the degenerate tramp.

  6. She’s justifying this with the story of Rahab? That’s an entirely weird place to go for justification. Rahab didn’t lie just to do something good — she agreed to let the Israelite spies hide in her house, and tell the Canaanite soldiers that they weren’t there, in exchange for the Israelites sparing her and her family when they invaded Jericho.

  7. I’m sick to death of “pro-life” self-congratulatory backpatting. “Hooray, I saved a baby by lying”, “Hooray, we’re saving unborn babies by cutting funds to any family planning agency that even mentions abortion”, without any regard for the actual consequences of these actions.

    For serious.

    I think it’s especially telling that all these amazing feats of “life-saving” are entirely imaginary. It’s very easy to tell yourself that, because of mundane and easy action X, you totes saved a life and won a moral victory against Y big bad enemy. It’s a lot harder to actually stick your neck out in real life to go against the grain and help a real live person who really is being persecuted.

    I wonder how many of these same people are acting as allies to oppressed groups, or even just going the everyday extra mile of taking a stand when someone they know says something offensive about a real person or group of people? And, yes, that is a rhetorical question.

  8. How does she know for sure she’s saving a life? She doesn’t have all the information – the woman who called could know she has a health condition that would prevent her from safely carrying to term, the woman could have an abusive partner who would hurt her for being pregnant, the woman could decide an unsafe illegal abortion is her only choice after being harassed by what she thought was her medical care provider and the CPC.

    I don’t understand. She’s saving a life because the woman might decide to have the baby. If the woman dies, they could maybe still save the baby. If the woman gets beaten almost to death, the father could still raise the baby. We’re not talking about a woman here, Wednesday, we’re talking about a life!

    the woman seeking an abortion would use double negatives and drop her G’s

    Yeah, I picked up on that, too. Here’s a bohunk redneck woman (or, alternately, an inner-city mother of eight who’s probably on drugs) who’s just too dumb to not get an abortion. O please, O please, save this poor misguided dumbass with your judgmental creamy whiteness!

  9. >I gave her the number of the local Care Net crisis pregnancy center.

    Ah, yes, CareNet. That’s also in keeping with the title of the post; these “crisis pregnancy centers” use deception and intimidation to prevent women from having abortions, and rarely are staffed by people with actual medical training. You’d get better pregnancy care at your local Home Depot.

    Link

  10. I almost wish the calling woman had called her bluff and said, “Okay, give me your home phone number and I’ll call you to coordinate about you adopting this baby.” It really irritates me when anti-choicers are so quick to tout adoption as an easy option that’s best for everyone, without A) understanding how difficult the adoption process is or B) being willing to adopt any of the thousands of children that are already up for adoption or in the foster care system (especially when those children are not white). To be fair, there are some anti-choicers who do walk-the-walk and adopt or foster children, but I’m sure it’s a pretty small proportion.

  11. “It’s also pretty odd to think that giving someone a CPC phone number = saving a life.”

    Since no one else has picked up on this (I guess I’m the only one “lucky” enough to have lived down the street from one of these things) Care Net crisis pregnancy centers are not real CPCs. From their website

    “With the support of Care Net and its network of pregnancy centers, people facing unplanned pregnancies are choosing life and hope everyday…”

    Their goal is to get women to continue their pregnancies and either give the baby up for adoption or keep it. They do not provide abortions or help women procure them elsewhere.

  12. I read through the comments over there and was pleased to see that a goodly number of posters had problems with the response. There is a long discussion over whether lying is okay and whether this person should have/could have done it in a less confrontational, more engaging way.

    That said, however, chew on this one:

    “The ‘enemy’ will use your own conscience as a weapon against you…satan is diabolical, after all.”

    I love the idea that you cannot trust your own conscience, since it could well be a tool of Satan: close your heart and do what we tell you!

  13. “I’m probably weird for picking this out of that story, but it did stick out at me: where did she get “daughter” from?”

    Probably the same place the anti-choice dudes suffering from post-abortion dude-syndrome get “son” from. Whichever sex they find more sympathetic or valuable is what they imagine this imperiled special snowflake to be.

    “Care Net crisis pregnancy centers are not real CPCs….Their goal is to get women to continue their pregnancies and either give the baby up for adoption or keep it. They do not provide abortions or help women procure them elsewhere.”

    Um, that’s pretty much what all CPCs do. That’s why there are so many call-in and write-in campaigns against funding the fucking things with tax money.

  14. Kate, that’s exactly what a Crisis Pregnancy Centre is. It’s a place where they lie to you and try to bully and guilt you into continuing the pregnancy. They often set up shop next to Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers in the hopes that women will get confused and go in the wrong door and end up with a lecture instead of an abortion.

  15. WTF?!?! This is really disturbing. I would’ve probably hung up the phone RIGHT AWAY as soon she paused and offered to “adopt my daughter”. Wtffff, that creeped me out so much!

    How do you think your cause is still good when you finally have to lie to get people to see it your way? Aren’t those warning signs?

  16. I’m confident that what this worker did is unethical, and expect that it is probably also illegal. I’m disgusted.

  17. Stanek mentions that she got this story through Facebook and gives the sender’s intials. I don’t have a Facebook account (the idea creeps me out), but it probably wouldn’t be too hard to figure out who this person is and where they likely work. From there it’d be one anonymous call, fax, or e-mail to alert their employers to whats going on in their call center.

    Just sayin’…

  18. While I don’t wish anyone in this economy to lose their job, I hope this person either loses their job or gets transferred away from the phonelines. That was horrible and underhanded, to lie like that and try to make the lady on the other end feel bad.

    I’m glad the caller tore into her too, because she deserved it.

  19. CareNet is definitely a Crisis Pregnancy Center.

    I think the reason the Feministe post says that it is odd that giving the number to CareNet = saving a life is that one does not automatically follow from the other. The woman who is giving out the false information wants to pat herself on the back for saving a life but all she really did was give out a wrong number. As even some of the commenters on Staneks site note, the end result could be just that the caller gets really pissed off.

  20. CareNet is the largest crisis pregnancy center chain in the US. Not all of them are called CareNet. They lend the name to some CPCs, and others just subscribe to their standards. The one good thing I can say about CareNet is that they have this nifty search tool where you can put in your ZIP code and find the nearest CareNet affiliate near you. It’s a really easy way to find fake clinics to stay away from.

  21. JADE SAID: “You know, for supposedly being on the side of the righteous and pure, they sure do employ a lot of under-handed and downright dishonest tactics. Funny, I was taught that there was a commandment about that. Something about bearing false witness. Sure, I haven’t set foot in a church in years, but I do recall a few things.”

    You said “they.” Aren’t you lumping one person at an insurance call center up with all anti-choicers? You also mentioned church–I may be liberal but I also have a lot of respect for church. Again, aren’t you are lumping one person at a call center with the anti-choice movement, as well as church.

    I used to work at a call center and some of the agents were complete idiots. I could not control the idiotic things they said on the phone any more than they could control what I said.

  22. “You said “they.” Aren’t you lumping one person at an insurance call center up with all anti-choicers?”

    The anti-choice brigade has a pretty fucking clear track record of lying through their teeth about fetal development stages, the efficacy of contraceptions methods, the mechanisms by which contraception methods work, the psychological and physical effects of abortion, how much support a woman who opts to carry to term and keep the baby can expect, how much support a woman who opts to carry to term and then adopt the baby out can expect, any aspect of organizations which provide abortion, and their actual goals. So no, I don’t think pointing out the ease with which one anti-choicer lies on an individual level, which has a repeated and known parallel with the lies told by the movement itself, is really being overly broad.

    Given that there are precious few anti-choice groups which don’t root themselves in religion if not a specific church, pointing out that they’re failing to keep within even their own articles of faith doesn’t seem particularly problematic, either.

  23. You said “they.” Aren’t you lumping one person at an insurance call center up with all anti-choicers?

    I suppose if you see a guy at a Star Trek convention he might not be able to quote lines from the show and even if he’s carrying a stack of spiral bound things from Kinkos he might have never written Star Trek fan fiction, but those aren’t bets I’m going to take.

    You also mentioned church–I may be liberal but I also have a lot of respect for church. Again, aren’t you are lumping one person at a call center with the anti-choice movement, as well as church.

    Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. Jade’s mention of church had some context. That context was that while she/he had not been in church for a long time they seemed to remember something about not lying having been said. That isn’t a criticism of Churches but an indictment of hypocrisy.

    But hey, don’t let a little thing like paying attention get in the way of your feigned outrage.

  24. I’m with the person who was heartened to see how many people were not pleased with this, even on Jill Stanek’s blog. Several even pointed out that pro-choicers could, and would, use this as ammunition against their movement: “See? All those nasty pro-lifers do is lie!”

    As for the person who mislead the caller: could and should be fired. And quite probably will be, since call center workers are often recorded and monitored to see that they’re doing their jobs correctly. Offering to adopt a stranger’s fetus and then giving out false information do not qualify.

  25. I’m glad to see that some of the pro-life commenters on the blog even criticized this tactic and labeled it as lying.

  27. I’m glad to see that some of the pro-life commenters on the blog even criticized this tactic and labeled it as lying.

    I’m less glad that so many of those who objected did so, at least partially, for tactical reasons.

  28. I couldn’t help it. I had to comment over there. And a snarky troll, I was. I got called “toxic.” Wee, who knew being a troll could be so much fun??

  29. I couldn’t help it. I had to comment over there. And a snarky troll, I was. I got called “toxic.” Wee, who knew being a troll could be so much fun??

    You know, you oughta be careful there. It always seems fun at first. You start small, and troll for great justice. But before long you’ll end up wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and an afro wig, spouting memes in front of a local church of Scientology.

  30. O please, O please, save this poor misguided dumbass with your judgmental creamy whiteness!

    Thank goodness I wasn’t trying to drink a beverage when I read that. I wish there were a viral video for “save me with your judgmental creamy whiteness!”

Comments are currently closed.