Crisis pregnancy centers are set up by anti-abortion organizations to deliberately misinform and mislead young women. When a woman thinks she might be pregnant, they want to be the first contact so they can talk her out of having an abortion. They use names like Care Net and Access Women Center to trick women into thinking that they are legitimate medical facilities. According to the Feminist Women’s Health Center (http://www.fwhc.org/abortion/fake.htm), they lie and mislead women by providing incorrect medical information. They rarely give out information over the phone; instead they insist that you come into the office where they’ll inundate you with anti-abortion propaganda.

Most of these organizations receive money from religious organizations and use religious propaganda to try to “save women’s souls.” According to The Huffington Post, they discriminate on the basis of religion when it comes to employment or volunteering. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of religion.

Every year, the state of Wisconsin provides funding for these organizations, even though, in 2011, Governor Walker removed funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization that does not discriminate for any reason and provides medically accurate abortion and contraceptive information. According to The Isthmus, the City of Madison recommends giving funding to Care Net to create crisis pregnancy center housing.

Since crisis pregnancy centers are run by religious organizations and violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, these organizations should not receive any federal or state funding. They use tax payer money to discriminate based on religion and to recruit clients to Christianity. They are also not required to have any medical training and provide false and misleading information to their clients.

Therefore, we ask the State of Wisconsin Legislature to quit funding for these so-called crisis pregnancy centers.