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I believe we’ve just gone down the rabbit hole

zuzu

Follow the bouncing ball: a group of fake abortion clinics are suing a group of real abortion clinics, claiming that the real abortion clinics were posing as fake abortion clinics to lure pregnant women to have abortions.

I’ll let LifeSiteNews explain it to you:

WHITE PLAINS, NY, September 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Yesterday, Expectant Mother Care-EMC FrontLine Pregnancy Centers filed suit against “Dr. Emily’s” abortion clinic with sites in the Bronx and downtown Brooklyn citing evidence of deceptive advertising practices.

“EMC is taking the lead in countering a truly deceptive abortion advertiser which pretends to be an alternative to abortion agency advertising under pro-life ad categories in New York City yellow pages,” said Chris Slattery, founder and president of EMC, operator of 15 pro-life crisis pregnancy counseling centers and medical clinics in New York City and suburbs.

“To aggressively compete against pro-life centers, we’re seen three NY abortion clinics pose as alternative centers to lure confused women who might be seeking help and support, into abortion clinics to possibly undergo abortions they may not want,” Slattery added.

“In a year when unfounded charges of deceptive advertising are flying against pro-life alternative to abortion groups from abortion industry advocates like Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the National Abortion Federation, we filed a sixteen-count complaint supported by affidavits alleging deceptive acts and practices in the conduct of an abortion clinic’s business in violation of N.Y. General Business Law 349,” Slattery said.

EMC is seeking an order from the New York Satte Supreme Court in Westchester County preliminarily enjoining the defendant from submitting any “Abortion Alternatives” advertising and compelling it to withdraw any such advertising it may already have submitted. EMC also seeks, at the conclusion of the case, a permanent injunction and the damages that are statutorily authorized.

Yes, my head hurts, too.

Is it me, or does this whole thing have a hint of “I’m rubber, you’re glue” to it? Amanda wrote about the deceptive practices of “crisis pregnancy centers” several months ago. The web site for Dr. Emily’s is pretty straightforward, what with the multiple references to abortion on its web page. The website for EMC is a little more cagey. They state the following:

EMC serves sexually-active young girls or women of any age, pregnant or not, who are in need of pregnancy help or are considering abortion, or are hurting from abortion.

EMC’s goals are to encourage expectant moms to choose motherhood, and either marriage, adoption, or self-sufficiency, and to turn toward chaste lifestyles. EMC strives to offer high-quality pre-natal care and in the future pediatrics, through physician partnerships, on-site at most of its centers.

Interestingly, they also include an entire page of links to stories about NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer’s fight against deceptive practices and advertising of crisis pregnancy centers — much like those Amanda documented. There’s also a page where defenders of the centers speak out; a page of articles about New York City’s requirement that medical residents at city hospitals receive abortion training; and a page showing the dark, shadowy connection between NARAL and Spitzer.

Oh, and a page about the importance of sonograms to crisis pregnancy centers (“If they just knew that they were carrying babeeeez, they’d change their minds!”).

And while I don’t have a Westchester phone book handy, neither this search nor this search turns up Dr. Emily’s listed under “abortion alternatives,” but there are several crisis pregnancy centers listed with names that just might deceive a pregnant woman into believing that they offer abortion there (such as “Accurate Abortion Information,” which is listed separately from “Pregnancy Resource Ctr” at the same address).

So, here’s what I think is going on: Yellow Pages publisher misfiles listing for Dr. Emily’s clinic, and crisis pregnancy centers, feeling embattled because Spitzer is going after their deceptive practices (an investigation by Rep. Henry Waxman found that 87 percent of CPCs provided false, misleading or medically inaccurate information about abortion), jump on the opportunity to slam a legitimate abortion provider for — well, what, exactly, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Emily’s provides counseling about alternatives to abortion, so a listing under “abortion alternatives” isn’t exactly deceptive.

H/T: Lindsay.

Bonus find while looking for the web sites above: Dawn Eden is both geographically challenged and a liar. No, Dawn, College Point is not part of Flushing, no matter how hard you wish it to be so.

UPDATE: While reading the Dawn Eden link, I came across this bit of information from commenter Sunny Chapman:

Crisis Pregnancy Centers all over the country have been investigated and/or sued for various forms of deceptive practices. One of the most common was listing themselves in telephone directories in the abortion clinic or abortion services category. States attorneys general in every state had to file suits against CPCs to get them to stop this practice and now pregnancy crisis centers advertise under “abortion alternatives” in the New York phone book(and elsewhere), rather than in the “abortion services” section, in compliance with consent decrees signed with two former state attorneys general, Robert Abrams in 1987 and Dennis Vacco in 1995. However, they still manage to sneak into the abortion services category online, as we see.

Well, this explains why this group was so het up over a phone book listing, doesn’t it?

See also Amanda and R. Mildred.

13 thoughts on I believe we’ve just gone down the rabbit hole

  1. I’m having one of those days where Dawn Eden is just making me giggle.

    I love the, “I have a link, therefore what I say must be true! Pay no attention to the fact that the link contradicts my point!” rhetoric.

  3. I interviewed Chris Slattery for an article once. He’s… interesting. I also saw him when he was screaming through a megaphone at the March for Women’s Lives a couple years ago.

  4. Wait… lemme get this straight… nope.. still don’t get it. Are they saying that Dr. Emily’s Abortion Clinic shows up under a section called PRO_Choice Alternatives? or something like that… is there even such a section… hold on, lemme look in my local phone book…hmmm, nothing from Probation-Prosthetics… hmmm there’s a teeny-tiny “Pregnancy Counseling” section which all looks like “right to life” stuff.. in fact one of them is called “right to life of…” but it’s concievable (teehee) that an “options” clinic that includes abortion as one of it’s option would be under that heading… okay… here we go… there’s “Abortion Alternatives” and right under it “Abortion Services”… then there’s the “Adoptions” section… wow, lots of different sections for pro-life, only one for Abortion…hmmm.

    Well, if NY’s yellowpage sections are setup the way my local one is then it’s entirely possible that yellowpages goofed and put Dr Emily’s under the wrong section… in which case it’s not deception, it’s incompetence on the part of the phonebook company.

    well, I may not have solved the case, but at least I know where to go if I ever need an abortion in my town… I’ve got 2 whole places to choose from, yippee… oh and I had to look in the whitepages to find my local Planned Parenthood.

  5. I smell sanctions for frivolous conduct. In the immortal words of Denny Chin (about Fox), “wholly without merit.”

  6. Thomas, that’s exactly what I thought: suing someone for false advertising when their advertising is *not* false like yours has “frivolous litigaton” written all over it. And the right wingers think WE’RE too litigious? I guess there’s a legal corollary to IOKIYAR?

  7. I interviewed Chris Slattery for an article once. He’s… interesting

    Interesting as in “may you live in interesting times”?

  9. “Interesting” as in basically called me an accessory to murder for my work with pro-choice groups, and when he was complaining about how easy pro-choice groups made it for women to terminate their pregnancies, said something along the lines of, “I don’t think women should have to be tortured if they have an abortion, but…”

    “Interesting” was the most generous word I could come up with. Although he was also unfailingly polite.

  10. And all the anti-choice blogs are up in arms about this. It’s kind of funny to watch them try and justify their anger.

    I do love how they’re going after Dr. Emily’s, when the website couldn’t be more clear that they’re an abortion provider — as soon as you open it, it says in big letters, ” We provide safe, gentle options for ending a pregnancy as early as 4 weeks and up to 24 weeks.” How much more straight-forward can they be?

    I’m also not sure how someone can get “duped” into abortion. CPCs can certainly dupe you into childbirth by postponing appointments, not returning phone calls, and scheduling multiple appointments far apart from each other as a way to string women along until it’s too late for them to have an abortion. But I really don’t see how one gets tricked into terminating a pregnancy.

  11. I’d love to hear them try to explain to a judge how “pregnancy counseling” can only legitimately mean non-abortion-related things.

    I mean, compare it with “abortion provider,” which is quite obviously mutually exclusive with “avoiding abortions.”

    I hope the judge has a sense of humor, like that one that told the two sides, in legal-ese, to settle using paper-rock-scissors and stop wasting the court’s time. A charge of deliberately filing a false accusation because no one in their right mind could possibly think providing abortions automatically eliminates any and all pregnancy-counseling abilities, would also be most welcome.

  12. Although he was also unfailingly polite.

    A polite torturer and murderer. How charming. I think that is “interesting” as in the Chinese curse.

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