Doing the right thing is tricky.

I'm getting flak for issuing an apology where an apology was due.  I guess no one said doing the right thing was easy?

Here's what happened: I had heard that there was a crisis pregnancy center in Asheville called "Asheville Pregnancy Support Services," or APSS.  I received a negative testimonial about the place about two months ago, so I listed it as a deceptive health center.  Such a listing prompted a man to picket the center, the way we do in Greensboro at the Pregnancy Care Center.

Two days later, I received an email from the owner of FemCare, Western NC's only abortion clinic.  She told me that she had heard from APSS's CEO that there was a picketer who said he was affiliated with CPCwatch.org, so she followed the breadcrumbs to me.  What she wanted me to know, however, is that APSS is not a deceptive health center.  It is run by pro-life women, but they do not do any biased options counseling, their ultrasounds are conducted by medical professionals (RNs, mostly), and they don't use false research and scare tactics to dissuade women from choosing abortion.  Basically, they help women who are carrying to term.

After confirming that I had, in fact, been contacted by FemCare's owner, I took a closer look at the testimonial we received about APSS.  I realized that it was a pretty generic CPC experience, which is likely why I just believed it outright.  Upon closer inspection, I found that the IP address used to send the testimonial (via the website's contact form) was from Iowa, and the email address provided is no longer in use.  Somebody was toying with me, either get a center listed or to prove that CPC Watch doesn't take care in fact-checking our sources.  I take full responsibility for the latter.

I had to check my biases.  Just because a center is staffed by pro-life individuals doesn't mean that they are offering bad counseling or biased information.  I wrote the CEO of APSS, issued a public apology on our blog, and 24 hours later I had received a large amount of inflammatory emails, but this time from pro-choicers.

I've been struggling with whether or not I should even respond to these messages.  I don't think it's wrong to apologize to an anti when an anti deserves an apology; surly, providing false or misleading information about a pregnancy center is no better than CPCs dolling out false and misleading information about abortion clinics.  Our supporters didn't feel that way.  I got more than one message that included something akin to "fuck 'em all" regarding pregnancy centers that don't provide abortions.  Another accused me of being "one more spineless liberal who is going to let what little momentum we have slip away," as apparently I'm "bending to the will of the antis" and "will concede everything in the name of 'common ground.'"  Ouch.

My question is, why do pregnancy centers have to provide, or even refer for, abortions?  From what I've seen, APSS is 100% open about what they do and do not refer for.  I have little issue with their operation, especially after conversing with Western NC's only abortion doctor. I don't think any center has to provide or refer for abortions.  So long as they're not undermining choice by giving out false or misleading information, not using scare tactics to dissuade women from making informed choices, not making women convert to Christianity to "earn" baby supplies, and not harassing them, I don't have a problem with the place existing.  Hell, my local Planned Parenthood clinic doesn't provide abortions, are we gonna picket them?

Admitting my mistake has had little to no effect on the picketer, who is, for lack of a better term, batshit crazy.  He refuses to believe there's nothing deceptive about APSS and told me outright that the fact that they don't link the abortion clinic from their website means they "deserve" to be picketed.  He also refuses to just take his picketing elsewhere, as apparently Asheville is "pro-choice turf" and therefore APSS has no right to exist.  

Coordinating projects like this can really be a double-edged sword.  I fully support a woman's right to carry a pregnancy to term (duh), even if abortion seems like the best option given her situation.  We can go back and forth all day long about how her decision is tainted with the biases inherent in a patriarchal system, whether or not she's wrong about an embryo being a sentient life form, or what we would do in her situation (think about the debate surrounding Juno here).  But at the end of the day, we want women to make the most informed choice they can, and after that we need to support it.  Isn't that what "pro-choice" is supposed to mean, after all?