Is there any strategy out there for pregnancy centers on how to respond to this new wave of attack? We're a Care Net center and abide by all policies and procedures to protect us legally, however this bad press can cause women to stay away from us.

It's more likely that learning what "pregnancy care centers" really get up to would cause women to stay away. And here, in their own words, CPC operators take us behind their doors.

[Unless otherwise linked, quotations are from communications archived at PCC Talk.org, and freely available for several years -- until I began posting them. Since then, access has been by subscription only.]

The first order of business at a crisis pregnancy center is persuading women to walk through those doors in the first place, and there are creative solutions to that challenge. The Catholic-sponsored CPC in my home town moved into a building next door to a clinic that provides abortion care, painted its signs to resemble those of the clinic, and shamelessly offered callers appointments for the "pre-abortion counseling required by state law." But for CPCs less fortunately situated, there are other ways.

You may notice ... that the name of our ministry is Choices Resource Center.. ... As our [executive director] at the time stated, "We want to redeem a good word - choices". ... When we changed the name, we had a huge spike of [abortion] vulnerable clients.

A huge spike of women who believed they were being offered a choice?

A Virginia CPC's slickly produced web site inspires confidence, but its director of clinical services seems unsure that their procedures are yielding maximum results.

I'm interested in knowing how many of you do the pregnancy test before you give your client information about her options vs those of you who give the pregnancy test after sharing options. Please share ... your success rates for both.

A client services director in Ontario shares her own expertise: "We do the pregnancy test after discussing the options. Otherwise, particularly for the negative test client, they are quick to leave and we haven't had a chance to really connect with them and give them all the information."

But the executive director of a Care Net affiliate in New York state shows them all what expertise really is.

We do the test after we have gathered information. First we get the info on our intake sheet. This gives us an idea of what's going on in her life. It also gives us the opportunity to begin forming a rapport with her. We then do the test, and then according to the results, do counseling from there. We have "packets", an abortion, adoption, negative test, and parenting test packet. We get out the packet according to her story and test result and then may throw in some sexual integrity also. We found this works very well for us. Be blessed.

This is a Care Net assessment tool -- downloaded directly from the CPC discussion list -- for determining what type and degree of attention a new client can expect to receive.

ASSESSING THE CLIENT'S ABORTION-VULNERABILITY

Definition of Terms

ABORTION-MINDED: The abortion-minded woman is one who appears to be planning or intending to obtain an abortion.
CRITERIA:

1. She is seeking information as to how to obtain an abortion. For example, asking questions such as: "How much does an abortion cost?" "Can you give me a referral for an abortion?" or "Do you do abortions here?"
   
2. She has an abortion scheduled, regardless of how tentative she seems.
   
3. The abortion procedure has been initiated, as in the introduction of laminaria.

ABORTION-VULNERABLE: The abortion-vulnerable woman is one who, by continuing her pregnancy, faces obstacles that she may feel incapable of handling or unwilling t