I am an alumnus of the College of Wooster (’22), who contacted the College recently regarding the placing of the Wayne County Pregnancy Crisis Center (PCC) in its list of pregnancy care options for students. I don’t need to restate the coercion, manipulation and other unethical tactics utilized by this organization, as concerned members of the Wooster community have already stated this. However, I wanted to shed light on the PCC organization, who funds them, and what they truly stand for, as what I discovered is very concerning.
The PCC lists many churches which donate and sponsor it financially. To no surprise of my own, I found that a multitude of the churches are not just anti-choice, but are also viciously spewing homophobic rhetoric. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the PCC donors, but merely what I found while researching only a small portion:
Fairlawn Mennonite Church is a proud member of an organization of churches called CMC Rosedale; an anti-abortion, anti-gay organization, where in their mission openly states that “It is in violation of God’s will to engage in sexual relationships outside the marriage of one man to one woman. The Bible forbids lust, pornography, fornication, adultery, homosexual practices and other sexual sins.” St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception equates abortion to the Holocaust, stating “Abortion is today’s equivalent of mass human extermination. There are those who deny the Holocaust happened…denial of reality is nothing new for Satan.” Oaks Church’s beliefs page states “We believe that God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other and that Scripture prohibits and threatens with judgment the style of life that embraces any other practice of sexual intimacy.” Wooster Nazarene church believes that “the practice of same-sex sexual intimacy is contrary to God’s will for human sexuality” and that “homosexual behavior is immoral.”
I had hoped that administrators would have done research into the affiliations of organizations assisting students with such sensitive topics as pregnancy care. For an establishment endorsed by The College of Wooster to be financially backed by some of the most cruel, hateful organizations in this country is deeply worrying. With the continued inclusion of the PCC as a pregnancy resource, many current students and alumni, including myself, would feel that homophobia and anti-choice rhetoric is not a deal-breaker for the College of Wooster.
Unsurprisingly, there are many fabrications regarding abortion and abortion side effects on the PCC’s website. Nationally, some of the most common lies stated by Crisis Pregnancy Centers such as the PCC are the “link[s] between abortion and mental health risks, preterm birth, breast cancer, and future infertility.” The PCC promotes many of these falsehoods, which I would like to systematically debunk. There is no significant link between abortion and mental health, other than the determination that “women receiving wanted abortions had similar or better mental health outcomes than those who were denied a wanted abortion.” There is no connection between abortion and future pregnancy complications. While they fear-monger sepsis as a potential adverse event, the rate is estimated to be 0.00087%.
Even if all of the lies were true, the fact remains that this organization attempts to remove the pregnant individual’s right to choose. Students do not receive healthcare at the Wayne County PCC but instead are fed lies, fear and guilt. Wooster needs to do better.
The Wooster Voice 