Yelp announced Tuesday it will add a “prominent consumer notice to crisis pregnancy center listings” in order to distinguish the pro-life centers from abortion clinics.
As Axios reported, the “consumer notice” states:
This is a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Crisis Pregnancy Centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.
The report continued:
Yelp’s move is the latest tech-company response to a post-Roe world in which abortion information has become a significant online battleground, with both sides of the debate applying intense pressure.
Yelp is apparently another tech giant that has decided women are incapable of distinguishing between a pro-life center and an abortion clinic, as can be seen in Axios’ “Catch-up quick” segment of its article that states the pro-life centers “do not offer abortion services but promote themselves to people seeking abortions and then typically counsel the patients to go through with their pregnancies.”
“It has always felt unjust to me that there are clinics in the U.S. that provide misleading information or conduct deceptive tactics to steer pregnant people away from abortion care if that’s the path they choose to take,” Noorie Malik, Yelp’s vice president of user operations, reportedly told Axios.
The notice is intended to demean and discriminate against the community-based centers, says Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America, whose research arm, the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), released a data analysis in June that revealed more than 800,000 lives have been saved through the pro-life centers since 2016.
"Real-world data shows that compassion & decency are winning, with more than 800,000 precious babies saved thanks to brave volunteers and staff who willingly take the risk of helping women & their families."
Learn more ➡️ https://t.co/j8Bz4amyO9 pic.twitter.com/9N1f7vIiig
— SBA Pro-Life America LifeSavingLaws.com (@sbaprolife) August 24, 2022
“Shame on Big Tech companies like Yelp for colluding with the abortion lobby in their war on compassionate pregnancy help,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, SBA Pro-Life America president. “Discriminatory labels are not meant to inform, but to scare women away from receiving the support and resources they need.”
The pro-life organization asserts Big Tech companies like Yelp and Google are being pressured by the abortion industry and its allies in politics to discriminate against the centers that provide emotional, holistic, and material support to women and families during the time of an unexpected pregnancy.
In June, over 20 House and Senate Democrats demanded that Google CEO Sundar Pichai restrict search engine results showing listings for pro-life pregnancy centers.
In a letter to Pichai, the pro-abortion Democrats referred to the pregnancy care centers as “fake clinics that traffic in misinformation and don’t provide comprehensive health services” and that are “dangerous to women’s health.”
And, in July, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asserted, “Crisis pregnancy centers that are there to fool people looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber abortion clinics by 3-1.”
“We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts and we need to shut them down all around the country,” she said.
Not gonna sugar coat this. It’s evil. If I knew nothing about Elizabeth Warren but the lies she tells about pregnancy centers I’d know enough. https://t.co/vvX5reruQh
— Casey Mattox (@CaseyMattox_) July 12, 2022
Moira Gaul, M.P.H., the associate CLI scholar who led the recent data analysis pertaining to pro-life pregnancy care centers, told The Star News Network pro-life leaders believe “women are able to distinguish the difference” between a pregnancy care center, that seeks to care for mothers and their families, and an abortion clinic that ends the life of an unborn baby.
“And pregnancy centers are clearly communicating who they are and the life-affirming services that they provide,” Gaul said. “I think it’s worth noting, too, that between 2007 and 2020, at least nine states have rejected legislation to regulate pro-life pregnancy centers. The media has chosen to ignore the fact that claims of deceptive advertising or communication have not held up in court.”
Gaul added Warren’s “outrageous comments” about pregnancy centers attempting to “fool” women are “simply out of step with reality.”
“And in fact, they stoke negative sentiment against pregnancy centers at a time when they are experiencing openly violent acts across the country,” she emphasized, referring to the approximately 80 incidents of violence, vandalism and intimidation toward pro-life individuals and organizations, including pregnancy centers and houses of worship, since the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion, as documented by SBA Pro-Life America.
In June, the national pro-life organization joined CatholicVote and over a dozen political organizations in sending a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding action.
Gaul said pregnancy centers are “bound to abide by a national ethical code which demands truthfulness and honesty in all advertising and communication to describe their services as well,” and that code includes their websites, she said.
“The centers are there to empower women,” she continued, adding that women are the strongest advocates for pregnancy care centers and they spread the word about the services offered.
“Pro-life pregnancy centers have a phenomenal client satisfaction rate and a significant amount of word-of-mouth referrals,” Gaul said. “And that speaks for itself.”
Pro-life pregnancy centers:
✔️ 2,700 centers nationwide
✔️ Served 2M people in 2019 for free/low cost (valued at $260M+)
✔️ 70% of Dems support public funding
✔️ 99% average client satisfaction rate
🚨 Yelp: WARNING!!
🚨 Warren: SHUT 'EM ALL DOWN!!https://t.co/4LUbaffufq
— SBA Pro-Life America LifeSavingLaws.com (@sbaprolife) August 24, 2022
Gaul said CLI conducted its last national study of pregnancy care centers and the services they provide in 2020.
“We know that, in 2019 alone, at U.S. pregnancy centers, almost 2 million people received various services and material items valued at approximately $270 million, and almost always at no cost to the recipient,” she explained, breaking down the statistics further:
Nearly 300,000 moms and dads completed parenting education; nearly half a million women were administered free pregnancy confirmation ultrasounds; over 21,000 women received after-abortion support – no matter what their choice, pregnancy center doors are always open to women.
And then over 2 million baby clothing outfits, 1.3 million packs of diapers, and over 30,000 new car seats were distributed, among many other material items – all in 2019.
Dannenfelser said America’s pregnancy care centers “exist to serve women and families, taking financial pressures and other types of coercion out of the equation.”
“The abortion lobby meanwhile fights tooth and nail against women’s right to informed consent, including hearing their baby’s heartbeat or seeing an ultrasound,” she added. “If Big Tech’s labels were truthful, they’d highlight all the real services pregnancy centers provide that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry don’t – such as diapers, formula, clothing, strollers, parenting and childbirth classes, education and career help, and much more – typically free of charge.”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
