Over the years, I have had many encounters with the pregnancy-care-center movement. I’ve encountered them when I’ve been a speaker at pro-family and pro-life conventions. I’ve provided training for administrators and counselors of these centers. I’ve interviewed some of them for my podcast. 

The totality of this experience convinces me that the pregnancy-care-center movement is an authentic “women’s movement.” I think they have more right to describe themselves as a “women’s movement” than some of the self-described “feminists.” 

First: pregnancy care centers are numerically dominated by women. At most of the meetings I’ve attended, the audience of staff and volunteers is 90% women. In fact, I was recently at one meeting that was striking for its “high” percentage of men: 25%! 

Some of the centers do have guys who volunteer to sit in the waiting room. The counselors at these centers have learned that many women feel pressured by their boyfriends to abort their children (a point “pro-choice” advocates seldom acknowledge). The male volunteers hang around the waiting room for the sole purpose of having that “man-to-man” talk that some of the younger guys may need to support their girlfriends in choosing life. 

For all the talk about “choice,” you might think women who call themselves “feminists” would support the full range of women’s possible “choices,” including raising the child with a supportive father. For all the talk about “toxic masculinity,” you might think self-described “feminists” would applaud men encouraging other men to take their paternal responsibility seriously. But I digress. 

Apart from this, the staff and volunteers of pregnancy care centers are predominantly women. And of course, the clients are predominantly women. What these women share — staff, volunteers and clients alike — is a conviction that babies are a blessing. Women create these centers to be there for other women, heart to heart, woman to woman. The pregnancy-care-center movement is a movement of women, by women, for women. 

However, pregnancy care centers are under attack — both legal attack and literal, physical attack — from people who describe themselves as “feminists.” Their main complaint is that pregnancy care centers are “misleading.” A critique published in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics breathlessly states: 

“[B]ecause these centers might tell women they have ‘plenty of time’ to get an abortion, they could delay access to abortion, which could lead to women missing the gestational age cut-off for abortion in a given state” (emphasis added).

Mind you, every state has laws and evidentiary standards defining consumer fraud. The hypothetical offenses listed in this article come nowhere near meeting those standards. 

Besides, the whole argument misses a crucial point. The decision to carry a baby to term is a decision that has to be reaffirmed every day for nine months. A pro-life center cannot simply “trick” a woman the day she comes in. The pregnancy care center would have to continue “misleading” her every day for the entire duration of her pregnancy. 

The contrast with the abortion clinic couldn’t be starker. During the nine months of a pregnancy, a woman will surely have days when she feels particularly lonely, scared or vulnerable. Her car breaks down. Her rent is overdue. She quarrels with her boyfriend. In that moment, she can walk into an abortion clinic and a few hours later, her baby will be gone forever. So, which type of clinic is more likely to be manipulating vulnerable women? 

This brings us to the heart of the matter: The “feminist” movement is not, and never has been, solely a movement against men. It is a movement of some women against other women. This fact has been hidden in plain sight since the beginning. Some of us have known for a long time that women like us are just as much the targets of “feminism” as men are. 

In point of fact, “feminists” have forged an alliance with some very powerful men. The billionaires who think there are too many people in the world pour tons of money into promoting abortion. These men, their power, and their money have entrenched “feminism” throughout the culture, making it difficult to dislodge. Yet pro-abortion women are permitted the undisputed right to call themselves “feminists.” 

These “feminist” women attack the pregnancy care centers, both legally and physically. “Feminist” politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren seek to throttle pregnancy care centers with regulatory burdens. Domestic terrorist groups that claim to speak for women, like Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us, have vandalized and even bombed pregnancy care centers. Since 2022, centers have endured 95 physical attacks, including bombings — most recently in Wasilla, Alaska, on Oct. 20. The Department of Justice has not pursued these cases of pro-abortion violence nearly as aggressively as they have pursued peaceful pro-life protesters.

Why the hostility against women giving out diapers and baby clothes? “Feminists” consider the pregnancy-care-center ladies as renegade women who are traitors to their sex. Their very existence blows the lid off the “feminists’” claim to speak for all women. 

The pro-abortion lobby is bloated with taxpayer dollars and massive donations from billionaires. The pregnancy-care community does not have powerful political connections, or deep-pocket sugar daddies, or docile media collaborators. Rather, these are little sororities of ordinary women helping women who want their babies, and reliable love from their babies’ fathers. 

A well-ordered society would support these goals. Civilization could be built on the truth that the human person is meant for love, that loving and being loved is the great key to human happiness and is available to anyone of any economic or social status. A well-ordered society also makes provision for exceptional cases, even while it upholds norms that benefit anyone who follows them. Decades of bad public policy and grotesque propaganda have obscured these timeless truths for many people. 

But not for the pregnancy-care-center community. They are building the infrastructure of the Civilization of Love: providing compassionate assistance to people who face difficult circumstances. It is high time all of us gave them credit for their contributions, the respect they deserve, and protection from their unhinged “feminist” enemies.