American Pregnancy Association Linked to CPCs

From: http://www.feministing.com/archives/010220.html

""This one is a doozy. Via RH Reality Check, we find that the American Pregnancy Association is not only linked to crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), but was originally one itself. Heather Corinna of Scarleteen did the research:

According to the 1999 site archive, the Helpline was established by Mike and Anne Sheaffer in 1995. The couple advertised their desire to adopt a baby on two billboards in Dallas and set up a hotline to respond to the calls from pregnant women the billboards provoked. . . The Schaeffers started the CPC called America's Crisis Pregnancy Helpline in 1995; that CPC was later renamed America's Pregnancy Helpline. In 2003, that organization spawned the American Pregnancy Association. Both the Helpline and the APA continued to exist, ostensibly as separate entities; in reality, at one call center, at the same address.(Emphasis mine)

Corinna discovered this when she unknowingly referred an inquiring teen to the APA's American Pregnancy Helpline and later did some digging only to find more than enough information to link them to anti-choice resources. The sites themselves are suspect enough, using language like "partial birth abortion" and giving implications that breast cancer and infertility could be side effects. And calling the Helpline resulted in the anticipated result; the operator refused to give a Scarleteen volunteer any referrals to abortion services, but gave her a number to a local CPC.

The scariest thing about this is that the reproductive health community at large has been in the dark about this, with many reproductive rights organizations linking to APA on their websites obviously without knowledge of its history, including the popular Medline Plus, which is a project of the National Library of Medicine. The thing is that at first glance, the website offers all accurate information; it's the most insidious of efforts I've seen from a CPC. And I don't doubt we will only find more. "