The Media Research Center just hates it when anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” are exposed for what they are — and the indoctrination and coercion of vulnerable women that occurs there on an apparently regular basis — so it must obfuscate and manufacture outrage in order to distract. For instance, late last year, Gabriela Pariseau cranked out two posts of manufactured outrage at Google for allegedly not including an anti-abortion center on Google Maps — making sure, of course, to dishonestly frame this as “censorship” — though she provided no evidence whatsoever that it was omitted deliberately.
A Jan. 15 post by Pariseau repeated a dishonest stunt it did last year by complaining that Google results for “pregnancy” offers all options on the subject and don’t adhere to right-wing anti-abortion narratives and point out what “crisis pregnancy centers” actually do:
The un-American search engine’s first result leads users to a Planned Parenthood page with an extremely detailed informational video answering “How Does Pregnancy Happen” and the option to learn more. The Google search result is a gateway for promoting abortion and discouraging women from seeking crisis pregnancy centers.
For example, within the same search result, Google placed a link to another Planned Parenthood page ironically called “Pregnancy Options” just underneath the informational link. But the page warns users about pro-life clinics which might go over many services and options other than abortion:
“Be careful when looking for a reliable health center. There are fake clinics that say they have pregnancy services. These are called Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and they’re run by people who are anti-abortion and don’t believe in telling you the truth about all of your pregnancy options. They may use lies and manipulation to try to scare or shame people out of choosing abortion,” Planned Parenthood noted.
Yes, Pariseau apparently believes that Google telling users the full truth about their pregnancy options is “un-American” — though she made no effort to dispute the accuracy of what Planned Parenthood stated. Her complaints were rehashed in a Jan. 17 post by anti-abortion extremist Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, who whined that the Google results include links that “praise abortion and bash places like Crisis Pregnancy Centers who apparently ‘lie’ to women to get them to NOT abort their kids.”
A Feb. 1 post by Tom Olohan went Godwin by invoking a Nazi metaphor to maliciously smear the Center for Countering Digital Hate for pointing out the deceptive nature of CPCs (despite his employer’s professed hatred of Nazi references in media): “For example, these ‘digital brownshirts,’ infamously pushed Google to censor crisis pregnancy centers to ensure that fewer women choose life over killing their babies.”
A whataboutism-laden March 3 post by Clay Waters complained anew that CPCs were being exposed for what they are:
PBS News Weekend anchor John Yang on Saturday threw some trendy trans silliness into his introduction to a news story suspicious of crisis pregnancy centers that actually help women deliver their babies instead of aborting them (which PBS has no problem with).
[…]Reporter Ali Rogin spoke with Carter Sherman, former journalist for the once-hip, now-bankrupt left-wing outlet Vice, and used slanted verbiage to tilt suspicion toward pregnancy centers.
Ali Rogin: In the United States, so-called crisis pregnancy centers are nothing new….But after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion, these largely unregulated centers have seen renewed support and attention. According to analysis by the group Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch, which supports abortion rights, anti-abortion pregnancy centers brought in at least $1.4 billion in revenue in the 2022 fiscal year. That includes at least $344 million in government grants….Carter Sherman is reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian….
Sherman is as liberal as her title. In January 2021 she tried to smear pro-lifers by associating them with the January 6 riots.
Waters huffed that Sherman “sounded disappointed that women walk into clinics and walk out with their fetuses intact,” which tells us he’s cool with deceiving women in order to force them to have a child they may not want. He also irrelevantly complained that “the abortion mill Planned Parenthood gets federal funding without being the target of hand-wringing reports from PBS about where they get their funding.” But federal money to pay for abortion is forbidden, so Waters is being dishonest by suggesting otherwise.