Every day, women of all different backgrounds walk through the doors of one of Support Circle’s pregnancy centers. These women have almost nothing in common with one another, except one thing: They are seeking a safe space to talk. That is, if the city of San Francisco will allow it.
The city has passed laws that single out pregnancy centers like ours because we do not offer abortions. Those laws make it harder for the women coming to us to find the help they seek. For decades, Support Circle pregnancy centers have provided pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, medical care, and counseling to Bay Area women facing unplanned pregnancies, in addition to connecting women with a network of community services including housing, job training, and financial counseling. But after ten years of working at Support Circle, I’ve come to believe our most important work is that which costs us nothing: listening.
We provide a no-pressure, nonjudgmental environment where women can speak their hearts, and we will listen. When a woman I’ll call Rosa came to us, she needed help. A teenage immigrant who was needed at home to help care for four younger siblings after their father abandoned them, she didn’t want to add to her family’s burden, but she didn’t want to have an abortion. She had no one to talk to.
Almost daily, I have worked with women like Rosa, women forced to navigate all kinds of external pressures while making a decision that will affect the rest of their lives. I know a thing about this, having gone through a pregnancy in which I was told my baby had a 50 percent chance of living, only to face a life with severe disabilities. I know from personal experience how transformative a simple act of nonjudgmental affirmation can be for a woman experiencing a challenging pregnancy. And that is what we offer, day in and day out, at Support Circle.
But now our centers are under attack. In 2011, the city passed a law targeting clinics like ours because we do not provide or refer for abortion. The law categorized centers like ours as “limited service pregnancy centers.” The laws work in only one direction; a clinic is considered “limited service” only if the “service” it does not offer is abortion or emergency contraception.
Centers that don’t provide the services we do, like ultrasounds or adoption counseling, don’t get that “limited service” label. The city then subjects the centers labeled “limited service” to burdensome advertising restrictions, and accuses us of breaking the law if, for example, Google displays our website when the terms “San Francisco” and “abortion” are entered into the search engine together.
The city claims this is to prevent “false advertising,” but it has the obvious and ironic effect of limiting our ability to advertise some of our services, which do in fact include counseling for women considering abortion in addition to post-abortion counseling.
In essence, San Francisco created a one-sided false advertising law trying to silence and shut down pro-life pregnancy centers, but not abortion providers, from serving women in need.
Support Circle centers actually provide more information and services than most other centers, because the women who come here are presented with all their options in a safe and unbiased environment where no one stands to profit from their decision. Yet San Francisco’s law ensures that when women look up information about abortion, they find only what for-profit abortion providers have to say.
In 2012, Support Circle sued the city to stop this unnecessary and unconstitutional ordinance. Represented by the nonprofit religious liberty law firm Becket and Locke Lord, we are now appealing that case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court has also just heard oral arguments in a separate but related case, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, which deals with separate efforts to force pregnancy centers throughout California to advertise and refer for abortion. Our amicus brief in that case calls attention to the issues we ourselves are having with anti-pregnancy center laws and expresses our solidarity with NIFLA and all the pregnancy centers around the country that are being bullied and vilified for offering women a place where they can learn about their full range of options; a place to come for help and support; a place to be heard.
At Support Circle, our job is to listen to the women. It’s something our state and local leaders might consider doing themselves every now and then.
Nancy Cecconi is a nurse and a board member of Support Circle Pregnancy Centers, which recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case as well in First Resort v. Herrera.
