Pro-Life Center Opens Next To Planned Parenthood In Flossmoor

FLOSSMOOR, IL — Aid For Women, a pro-life, faith-based crisis pregnancy center, opened earlier this year seven feet from Flossmoor's Planned Parenthood, a reproductive health care center that also performs abortions. That is setting the stage for a reproductive rights controversy in Flossmoor's backyard.

Several demonstrations have already been held earlier this year against Planned Parenthood, some as part of the pro-life 40 Days For Life campaign. However, abortion advocates also are quietly gearing up to spread the word about what they say are the "dangers" of facilities such as Aid For Women.

"Women, when they go there, quite frankly are duped," said Paula Thornton Greear, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Illinois.

Aid For Women opened in February for women "who perhaps might be having difficulty moving forward with their pregnancy, and are maybe in a situation, whatever that might be," said Frances Jimenez, the center's assistant director.

The $1.5 million-nonprofit was founded in 1978 by Thomas Bresler, a deacon at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Deerfield, IL. He founded it in reaction to the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortions legal in the United States. Besler and his supporters wanted to find a way to offer women with unexpected pregnancies an alternative to abortions. The Flossmoor branch is a part of a network of five Aid For Women facilities across Northern Illinois that serve about 4,000 women each year.

"We offer holistic caring for a woman and her pregnancy," Jimenez said.

The center, Jimenez added, offers counseling, some medical and social-services referrals, and residential programs. It is not a licensed medical facility, but it does offer ultrasounds after the seventh week of pregnancy. Jimenez said the center is run by a licensed OB/GYN and has certified sonographers on site. Aid For Women does not offer abortion services and it does not counsel women about the state's abortion options.

Area residents and medical services providers, including Planned Parenthood, take issue with Aid For Women not necessarily because of its pro-life advocacy -- its clients say they have benefitted from Aid For Women's services -- but because the center offers misleading medical information and because its tactics for persuading women to walk in its doors are questionable. They point to similar centers across the nation that have been criticized for the same issues.

An article in the March 2018 issue of American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, for example, while noting that such centers are legal, said they are unethical.

"Although crisis pregnancy centers enjoy First Amendment rights protections, their propagation of misinformation should be regarded as an ethical violation that undermines women’s health," the authors wrote.

One of the biggest criticisms is that Aid For Women claims to offer "abortion pill reversal." Abortion pill reversal does not exist. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has issued a statement about them, saying claims that effective reversals can be used, including those that use progesterone to try to stop medication abortions, are "not supported by science."

"Claims regarding abortion 'reversal' treatment are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) ranks its recommendations on the strength of the evidence, and does not support prescribing progesterone to stop a medical abortion."

Aid For Women also opted to open its new clinic seven feet from Flossmoor's Planned Parenthood on Governor's Highway. All of its locations are within a 10-minute drive of a Planned Parenthood or abortion clinic. Its Chicago location is 154 feet from a Planned Parenthood in the Loop. The strategy to open a crisis pregnancy center near a Planned Parenthood or abortion clinic is a documented strategy by pro-life advocates, Thornton Greear said. The plan is to intimidate women seeking help or to dissuade them from entering a clinic that offers abortion services, she and others said.

"There is a pattern of moving next to Planned Parenthoods across the country," Thornton Greear said. "These fake women's health centers are really organized and seek to prevent women with unintended pregnancies from considering abortion. They lure women in and really actively try to persuade them that they should not consider or not move forward with the decision to get an abortion.

Planned Parenthood is a 100-year-old organization that provides affordable medical care, including sexual health care, to more than 1.5 million people across the nation. Its Flossmoor branch opened in 2018. It regularly comes under fire by pro-life advocates because it offers abortion services.

Jimenez, however, said the center is not "fake."

"We don’t offer what they offer, and our tests and ultrasounds may differ in scope, but they are not fake," she said.

She could not answer why the center claimed to have an abortion reversal method and could not explain how it worked.

"Abortion pill reversal... I don’t think... I will have to defer you to Susan," she said. Susan Barrett, Aid For Women's executive director, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Jimenez also ended the interview with Patch after an editor asked the question about abortion reversal. Patch could not ask about Aid For Women's decisions for locations of its centers, about claims of unethical practices or other questions.

However, in an interview with the Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle, Jimenez said the center intentionally opened next to Flossmoor's Planned Parenthood.

“We were open in response to Planned Parenthood. There were some members of the community who had concerns about Planned Parenthood and their practices,” Jimenez said told the Chronicle.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Planned Parenthood is that it offers abortion services only, Thornton Greear said. The clinic also offers a range of services, including health and wellness screenings, smoking cessation programs, STD treatment, and men's health services, such as erectile dysfunction.

The difference between Planned Parenthood and organizations such as Aid For Women, is that Planned Parenthood offers nonjudgmental and complete medical information so that all patients can make the decisions that are right for them, she said.

"We have to make sure that people are given the information they need that is not censored, and that they are given medically accurate information so they can make the choices that are best of them them. If we don't, then we put health and lives at risk, and we can't afford that," she said.