VICTOR JOECKS: Crisis pregnancy centers give women more choices. That’s why Democrats hate them.

If Democrats were actually pro-choice, they would be celebrating crisis pregnancy centers instead of attacking them.

Last week, Clark County School District Trustee Katie Williams gave her quarterly stipend of $2,000 to the Women’s Resource Medical Center. The organization provides pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, prenatal care, counseling and other supports for pregnant woman. It offers these services free, depending on private donations to cover costs.

Providing medical and material support to pregnant woman doesn’t sounds controversial. But Williams was forced to defend her donation. That’s because Women’s Resource Medical Center is a crisis pregnancy center. It tries to persuade abortion-vulnerable women to keep their children. It’s very successful, too. In 2020, it says its efforts saved 1,776 babies.

The group contends that “93 percent of abortion choices are driven by a lack of support.” By providing that support, it hopes to save the lives of preborn children. Thousands of crisis pregnancy centers around the country have similar missions.

In other words, crisis pregnancy centers provide women with more choices. One might assume the “pro-choice” side would be grateful for these privately funded efforts.

Nope. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is co-sponsoring a bill that could bankrupt most of these groups. The proposal directs the FTC to “promulgate rules” prohibiting misleading statements about the “provision of abortion services.” That’s extremely vague. But the potential penalties — the greater of 50 percent of a nonprofit’s yearly revenue or $100,000 — aren’t.

Warren claimed crisis pregnancy centers “prey on people who are pregnant and vulnerable.”

That’s absurd. Offering a pregnant woman free services that give her more options is empowering, not predatory.

“When someone explained that you’ll give me all the prenatal care, I was really happy,” Johanna said in a video for Women’s Resource Medical Center. She added, “I made a good decision. My baby is today with me. She’s beautiful.”

Crisis pregnancy centers aren’t just facing verbal assaults. There have been dozens of instances of arson and vandalism against pro-life groups since the Dobbs decision leaked.

Thirty years ago, some Democrats might have praised crisis pregnancy centers or at least vocally condemned these attacks.

“We have to remind the American people once again that being pro-choice is very different from being pro-abortion,” Bill Clinton told a women’s group in 1992. He also said abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” In 2008, his wife agreed. Abortion should be “safe, legal and rare, and by rare, I mean rare,” Hillary Clinton said at a presidential candidate forum.

It’s jarring to read those statements because they’re virtually extinct in today’s Democratic Party. Abortion — up to the point of birth — is now presented as an unadulterated good.

“Abortion is normal,” Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said Tuesday at a congressional hearing. “It is an act of love.”

The two sides of the abortion debate couldn’t be more different. One thinks love is providing free care to expectant mothers. The other thinks love is murdering an innocent preborn child.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.