Over at RH Reality Check (where, full disclosure, I'm a contributing columnist), Eleanor Bader has an informative piece on an issue that's long been percolating under the radar: States' use of vanity license plates to promote crisis pregnancy centers and oppose abortion.
Randy Harris, a virulently anti-choice county commissioner from Ocala, Florida, is considered the mastermind of the idea to have state DMVs collect funds to promote adoption over abortion. His plan was simple -- have the state agency sell "Choose Life" tags for $22 above the regular cost of a license plate. The extra money would then go to non-profit adoption agencies, so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and maternity homes with the sole purpose of encouraging the unhappily pregnant to put their progeny up for adoption.
Harris galvanized supporters by arguing that since only one percent of women deemed "abortion vulnerable" by CPCs gave their babies to adoptive families, more needed to be done to promote this option. And doing more, he reasoned, required money for the medical care, shelter, food and living expenses of those giving birth. How simple it would be, he cajoled, if people bought vanity tags to promote the cause.
The problem isn't just that no pro-choice counterpart to the "Choose Life" plates exist. It's also that study after study shows that CPCs, despite claims to the contrary, provide women and their children with almost no support after the birth, and that they feed pregnant women a string of lies, telling them abortion increases a woman's risk of breast cancer, suicide, and depression. The money raised by the vanity license plates is more likely to be used purchasing ultrasound equipment for CPCs than actually helping poverty-stricken women and their babies. Sure does sound like a business the state shouldn't be promoting.
--Dana Goldstein
