Washington – On June 6, Cheryl Smith took her last $600 and drove her teenage daughter from Baltimore to Severna Park, Md., to get an abortion.
When they got there, a receptionist told them the clinic had changed hands. The abortion provider had moved a few miles away, she said, but the new clinic would offer a pregnancy test and sonogram for free.
The Smiths stayed. After they saw a picture of the fetus at 21 weeks with arms and legs and a face, their thoughts of termination were gone.
“As soon as I seen that, I was ready. It wasn’t no joke. It was real,” Makiba Smith, 16, said. “It was like, he’s not born to the world yet, but he is inside of me growing.”
By many accounts, the ultrasound exams have proved effective in persuading women to stay pregnant.
A 2005 survey by Care Net, a Sterling, Va.-based network of about 1,000 pregnancy centers run by abortion foes in the United States and Canada, found that 72 percent of women who were initially “strongly leaning” toward abortion decided to carry their pregnancies to term after seeing a sonogram. Fifty percent made the same choice after counseling alone.
Such results have led abortion foes to buy more ultrasound machines, which can cost as much as $50,000 each.
In the past 2 1/2 years, Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, estimates it has helped 200 pregnancy centers buy the machines.
Some funding is also coming from taxpayers. About 20 states have designated funding for anti-abortion counseling centers, according to the Chicago- based law firm Americans United for Life.
With its ultrasound machine and its location, the Severna Park Pregnancy Clinic demonstrates two of the most important tactics in an intensifying campaign to woo women away from abortion clinics.
In recent years, organizations fighting abortion have added medical services to hundreds of Christian-oriented pregnancy counseling centers nationwide. Many of these clinics have opened in or near places where women go to end pregnancies.
The new Severna Park clinic’s operators say their strategy is akin to a business plan.
“Just like McDonald’s and Starbucks look for competitors to be next to,” the pregnancy centers look to set up “where women will be seeking abortions,” said Pam Palumbo, executive director of the Bowie Crofton Pregnancy Clinic in Prince George’s County, Md.There are at least 2,200 such anti-abortion pregnancy centers across the country, a nearly 30 percent jump since 1999, according to data from one of the largest pregnancy-center networks, Heartbeat International of Columbus, Ohio.
The network counts 561 such centers that offer medical services, about a quarter of the national total. By comparison, abortion-rights advocates estimate there are 1,800 abortion clinics nationwide.
Abortion-rights advocates say the proliferation of anti- abortion pregnancy clinics is a dangerous trend, confusing vulnerable women by mixing a seemingly neutral clinical environment with a religious agenda.
“They can set up a waiting room and an exam room, but that doesn’t mean they employ actual medical practices,” said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, a Washington, D.C.-based network of abortion providers.
They also typically advocate sexual abstinence until marriage and do not help women obtain contraception.
A report in July from congressional Democrats found that the federal government has contributed $30 million to anti-abortion pregnancy centers since 2001.
Most of that money paid for sexual abstinence education. But some was distributed as grants to help pay for ultrasound machines, the report found.
