Regarding Crisis Pregnancy Centers

GOP and pro-life friends: let's talk about Planned Parenthood and Christian crisis pregnancy centers/women's clinics.

CW: Rape aftermath

"Just replace PP with pro-life women's clinics."

That's the #1 alternative I hear whenever defunding PP is on the table, which is every waking second of every day. First, please see my post on what "defunding PP" actually means, then read along with my story about how a pro-life women's clinic could have helped ruin my life.

When I was a kid, I used to do administrative busywork for the Pro-life office that's now called CareNet. Maggot and I would file papers and glue paper hearts together, so the abstinence educators could show how premarital sex damages people. It seems a little surreal now, but thankfully my family wasn't out waving around signs with dismembered fetuses on, screaming at the baby-killers. Office work was pretty innocuous, comparatively.

Fast forward twenty years, and I'm huddled at the police station late on a Monday morning, shivering in my work jeans and huge flannel shirt. I knew my rapist, we'd been good friends in the past, I wasn't sure if I wanted cops to go pick him up in a cop car. It had only been about 40 minute, and I was still reeling. The officer was kind, but dismissive. He told me if I didn't let them go pick this kid up now, I had no legal action I could pursue (which was, it turns out, TOTALLY FALSE). He only mentioned the SANE nurse obliquely, as an offhand that I couldn't get a rape kit done unless I filed a report right then (also false), and sent me to get STI testing at a women's clinic nearby, instead.

So I didn't know what to do. I was in shock, I had no idea what my options were, I didn't even know what a rape kit was, so what could I do? I drove myself to the clinic.

I got there, in tears, and babbled my story to the women there. But the women's long hair and denim skirts should have tipped me off: this wasn't a women's health clinic at all, despite the name on the building. It was just...I dunno? A center? They directed me to CareNet. One of them handed me a tract.

"No thank you," I said, as politely as possible. A tract? That was the last thing I needed: a tangible reminder of how useless this journey had been so far.

So I drove to CareNet, and I was calm, by then. I'd never been in the new building, but I knew these people once. Maybe they would help me. I was pretty sure they had actual health services.

The ladies were nice, and totally at a loss. They gave me water, and then made me sit through their entire abstinence presentation, including the tired, debunked correlation =/= causation relationships between, say, abortion and breast cancer or depression. They warned me about AIDS. They showed me big graphic printouts of STIs.

Let me remind you.

I was in the clothes I'd been raped in.

I hadn't changed or showered; I knew that much of the post-rape process.

It had now been about 3 hours and I'd just been raped by someone I thought I knew and I was waiting for STI testing and I was BEING SHOWN PICTURES OF STIs. How...How fucking tone-deaf can you be? How thoughtless? Yes, tell me how sex is bad, I was just RAPED, I think I fucking KNOW.

At one point, the woman stopped the presentation. "If you got pregnant from this, what would you do?"

"I'm on the pill, so I hope it's not an issue. If it were my boyfriend's? I dunno. I'm not in a position to make that call right now. But if it was from my rapist? I'd get an abortion in a heartbeat."

She looked horrified. "It's not the baby's fault," she said, angrily.

"It's not my fucking fault, either," I shot back. "He's already ruined enough."

And I sat there, shivering, because I didn't know what else to do, and because I thought these ladies had some way of helping me. They told me they had to do this presentation, and so I let them do the presentation, and finally, an hour and a half after I got there, it was finally over.

I asked about the STI testing.

"Well, we have a nurse-practitioner who comes in once a week, but she's not in for a few days. I guess we could collect a sample? She could test it when she's in this week?"

And that was it. THAT was the service they offered me. That's what they made me wait hours for. I wanted to scream, to cry, to die. Instead I gave them the sample (urine only; they couldn't do a blood test) and they sent me home. I threw my clothes in the trash. I left class early Tuesday and didn't go back all week. My boyfriend/roomate dumped me. I drank and drank and drank.

It was four days before I told anyone else.

That's when I found out about the SANE nurse. That's when I found out the piss test I'd done had done NOTHING for me, and of course it wouldn't have: 3 hours isn't enough time for anything to show in up a sample.

Here's what was supposed to happen:

Go to the SANE nurse, get a rape kit done, turn over my clothes to evidence. They'd give me prophylaxis for anything I might have been exposed to. They'd file a report themselves.

By the time I got to the hospital it had been 4 days, and I had obviously showered. The injuries had healed. The prophylaxis should have been administered; by Friday it was too late for most of the preventative meds to even be effective. I just had to hope that my rapist hadn't transmitted anything nasty.

My sister, bless her, took my keys, went to my house, and dug my clothes out of the trash. They're still in evidence somewhere. I remember when I was desperately poor I considered taking them back, because I needed work pants. That's a fun memory.

But the failure of the pro-life clinics was the icing on the betrayal cake. They had failed me in every conceivable way. They gave me no information. They gave me no care. They gave me no prophylaxis. They gave me one test that was worthless, anyway. They made me suffer the indignity of a fearmongering, scientifically-inaccurate presentation designed to make me feel shame for sex and fear for its consequences when I was in no position to defend myself against them. They didn't even have the capability to provide care, and this is the biggest pro-life clinic in Madison, which is presumably better staffed and equipped than most elsewhere in the state.

I trusted these people to help me. They did not, and their misinformation was worse than if I'd just gone home and googled "sti testing Madison."

"Why didn't you go to Planed Parenthood?" my sister asked me. "You go there for birth control anyway. They even have rape counselors. They'd have sent you straight to the SANE nurse or the RCC."

"I don't know; I panicked, I thought the cop knew what he was talking about, I trusted them, I thought they could help me."

3 months later, I went to a local non-profit and got my first HIV test. Clean. 6 months later, I went to PP and got a full round of STI testing. Their sliding pay scale (reimbursed with tax money! This is what that "funding PP is for!) meant I could get tested for free: urine and blood tests. I was clean.

I was lucky.

If I'd caught something dangerous from my rapist or been more damaged than I was, I'd be screwed. The incompetence of the pro-life clinics would have led to serious illness or complications.

So when people say "Pro-life clinics can provide the same services as PP," I'm here to tell you they absolutely cannot. They are NOT medical providers. Most of them are equipped with, at most, a single ultrasound machine. They are not staffed by medical personnel. They don't offer medical services. They can't give referrals. They provide no actual medical information for pregnant women. They use coercive tactics and inaccurate information to try and bully desperate women into making the choice that the clinic wants them to make. They can't do jack shit to help in an actual medical emergency.

Planned Parenthood is a MEDICAL PROVIDER, which is currently able, thanks to reimbursement, to provide low-or-no-cost medical care (NOT ABORTIONS THAT'S ILLEGAL SHUT UP IN ADVANCE) to low-income women like I was back then. I've been going to Planned Parenthood for about a decade: first for birth control and pelvic exams, then, after my rape, for periodic STI testing, now as a volunteer.

They staff is medically-trained. They're incredibly helpful and professional. They have a ton of information. They are an equipped and staffed medical facility. They provide comprehensive prenatal care and checkups for women who are or want to become pregnant. They give referrals. They do cancer screenings. They do all this despite threats to their life, political pressure, budget cuts.

And if you let that be taken away, there is nothing to take its place.