For Immediate Release: October 2, 2023
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Six days after the Buffalo firebombing of CompassCare, a national pro-life medical network, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill to investigate pro-life pregnancy centers while calling pro-life people Neanderthals. According to the Governor’s website, the bill (S. 470), dubbed the Pregnancy Center Investigation Act, “Authorizes a study to examine unmet health and resource needs and impact of limited service pregnancy centers.” The law defines “limited service pregnancy centers” as an entity “whose primary purpose…is to provide services to clients who are or may be pregnant, that… fails to provide or refer for the full range of comprehensive reproductive and sexual health care services …including, but not limited to…abortion care….”
Rev. Jim Harden is a medical ethicist and the CEO of the pro-life medical network CompassCare. He observes, “I find it comical that its pro-life pregnancy centers being labeled ‘limited service’ when we’re the ones providing everything but abortion, for free, while abortionists do nothing but abortion for a fee. Abortion is not medicine. Abortion is quackery. The reason the original Hippocratic Oath says, ‘I will not give a woman an abortive remedy’ is because abortion represents the opposite of the purpose of medicine, to heal and maintain the health of the patient. Abortion does neither one of those things for either the mother or the baby.”
Pregnancy centers are being sent the surveys from New York’s Department of Health now. The survey results must be compiled into a report by December 13, 2023, with recommendations to the legislature, implying further action against the politically disfavored pro-life pregnancy centers. The law does not appear to contain any penalties for non-compliance.
The bill requires a task force of nine people to manage the investigation. It is uncertain who those people are but they must include a representative from the division of consumer protection; a member of the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists whose practice includes abortion; a staffer from the Bureau of Social Justice from the office of New York’s Attorney General run by pro-abortion Attorney General Letitia James who demanded Google filter pregnancy centers off their mapping feature so women could not find them.
Rev. Harden says, “While Gov. Hochul, the legislature, and New York AG James vilify and demonize pro-life people and pregnancy centers, these groups have never violated any laws, injured any women, killed anyone, engaged in medical malpractice, nor have been sued or convicted of any crimes that we are aware of. Compare that to New York’s private practice abortion industry. A recent expose revealed private practice abortion clinics in NY have literally killed ‘at least 38 women and girls as young as 13.’ This does not even consider the serial malpractice of abortionists that harm 16-year-old rape victims with chemical abortion.”
Rev. Harden challenges Hochul, “All surgical abortionists in New York State must be certified by the Department of Health, hold third-party accreditation, and complete regular health department audits. I will only consider complying with Hochul’s Stalinistic law designed to attack the politically disfavored by circumventing the justice system when audits on abortionists are made public by the Department of Health.”
Interestingly, a study of the impact of pro-life pregnancy centers in New York has already been performed, released shortly after the Pregnancy Center Investigation Act was passed last year. The study performed by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that of eighty-four pregnancy centers, 26,000 people were served in 2019 alone with millions of dollars’ worth of free pregnancy tests, ultrasound exams, STD testing and treatment, parenting classes, abortion recovery counseling, diapers, baby cloths, and more. After multiple attacks on the pro-life medical network CompassCare in New York during a national pro-abortion terror spree, Gov. Hochul refused to engage the state terrorism task force to stop the violence—yet she claimed the “State Police stand ready.” Instead, New York politicians like Hochul, in 2022 alone, gave millions to abortionists to increase their security, recruit more abortionists, enhance their infrastructure to deal out more chemical abortion through telemedicine technology, stockpile chemical abortion drugs to dispense should the courts overturn the FDA’s illegal approval of the drugs, while passing legislation insulating abortionists from criminal liability for violating chemical abortion laws. Could this latest move attacking law-abiding, peaceful pro-life pregnancy centers be a political ploy to garner more votes ahead of the 2024 Presidential Campaign, knowing that flipping four House seats in New York could sway the national balance of power back to pro-abortion politicians?
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