This week we’ve been discussing how Planned Parenthood routinely displays that it isn’t concerned for a woman’s choice. The focus at Planned Parenthood is that a woman can get an abortion, get birth control (which is often abortive –see this blog) or get treated for STDs. As we reported Monday when we told you about Addison’s visit to Planned Parenthood, noted, and as others have said since then, if you are visiting a Planned Parenthood because you're uninsured and might be pregnant, you'll be out the door if you want to keep your baby.

People have written me with their experience from various of legalized abortion about their experiences at Planned Parenthood and its lack of giving them knowledge or choices or helping them if they were pregnant.  Even though their stories are varied and the cites and even decades are different, we see a resounding pattern of only one choice. Here are a few of their stories.

Charity went to the Escondido, CA Planned Parenthood last year for help. She says:

I just wanted a free pregnancy test to apply for state insurance, and  they told me its only free if I didn't know I was willing to keep "it" or not. So I said of course I want to keep my baby. The woman said, “don't say baby in here. It's $35 for you to take a pregnancy test without counsel on ‘rescheduling your pregnancy.’" I said a few things about LIFE. My son said "you can't kill my baby sister!" That's when we decided on our daughter's name – Zoe, Life God's way. I'm now holding my sweet 6 month old; she is a marvelous tiny person!

A reader named Susan responds:

The same thing happened to my friend at Planned Parenthood 21 years ago [in New Jersey]. She went in for a free pregnancy test (which was not free) and the only question they asked her was "when do you want to schedule your abortion?" When she said she didn't want an abortion they booted her out the door.

Lest we think Addison’s story was a fluke, a result of current abortion clinic pressure and the high stakes of it all, even before that story ran, I  learned from "Sarah" who visited a Planned Parenthood in Mesa, AZ:

My Planned Parenthood experience was 30 years ago and short. I lived in an apartment building across from them. I had just become a Christian, trying to get pregnant. I took my jar of "specimen" over and found out I was pregnant! WOO HOO! They asked how I wanted to deal with the pregnancy, and I said, well, I want to see the doctor and talk about the pregnancy, labor and delivery, ASAP! I was excited.
They said, "Um, you're KEEPING the baby? We don’t do that here." I was shocked. I asked for a referral, because we had not lived there long. They didn’t refer to OBs either! WOW!  I was so young, and they were so beside themselves that I would be keeping the baby! (and probably upset that I had wasted their pregnancy test).I learned they aren’t really PLANNING for PARENTHOOD.

This type of attitude is what helps women give in to abortion when they don’t really understand or have convictions otherwise. Joanne talks of her visit to a Minneapolis  Planned Parenthood 31 years ago, in 1979. She said:

Even though I was only 16, I received no true "options counseling" but rather just the video recorded pre-procedure counseling. I wasn't asked about my decision-making nor was information given about options or available resources.

Planned Parenthood espouses the principle that a woman has a right to decide what to do with her body (of course ignoring that another life lives in her when she is pregnant). It insists that choice is a value that drives all Planned Parenthoods. But story after story shows that the only choice it wants is the choice to “reschedule a pregnancy” for later–by aborting the baby now.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood marches anyone into court who passes a law requiring crisis counseling, sonograms, and other preventative measures before an abortion. Planned Parenthood insists that these are one-sided and biased interventions that should not be allowed to “deceive” women, but these anecdotes from average American women who happened into Planned Parenthood clinics remind us of why we need these pregnancy centers, why sonogram laws are important, and most of all why Planned Parenthood really holds no value of choice outside its own.