We’ve written dozens of stories over the past year filled with examples of the NARAL-inspired assault on Pregnancy Resource Centers/Crisis Pregnancy Centers. And to give the devil her due, they are having a kind of success.

  By that I mean they run to sympathetic office holders with “investigations” purporting to “prove” varied misdeeds, usually under the all-purpose rubric of “misleading advertising.” And they get ordinances passed, in places like New York City, Baltimore, Montgomery County (Maryland), Austin, Texas, and (momentarily) San Francisco.

   The first three have been overturned by judges whom (it would not be an exaggeration to say) were angry at the blatant infringements of First Amendment rights and the selective desire for “transparency”: no abortion clinics are required to post what services they do and do NOT provide.

   Undeterred the NARAL affiliate in North Carolina has produced a report which I started reading this morning.  Here’s where “The Truth Revealed: North Carolina’s Crisis Pregnancy Centers” is coming from: they are incensed that the largely-volunteer-driven CPCs might receive a few dollars to help them give women a real choice.

   These women-helping centers will soon be receiving a portion of the money anyone who chooses to buy a “Choose Life” license plate pays. (The money will go to the “Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship, an umbrella organization” for Crisis Pregnancy Centers around the state, according to Laura Leslie of WRAL.com.)

   NARAL of North Carolina argues there are two reasons the CPCs should be regulated by the state. First, because of this money, and, second, because of a portion of a new state law (since enjoined) that requires that an ultrasound image of the unborn child be displayed at least four hours prior to an abortion so that the mother might view it and that she be given the opportunity to hear the unborn child’s heartbeat.

   “Under the law, the state will offer resources to help women who can’t afford ultrasounds find free ones,” Leslie reports. “Many of those referrals will likely be to CPCs,” because many of the centers offer free ultrasounds.  To the kind-hearted souls at NARAL, the ultrasound website amounts to a “state–sanctioned channel through which women are referred to these CPCs.”

   House Majority Leader Skip Stam (R-Wake), responded in an email to Leslie. “The money to be distributed comes from the extra money that the people pay for vanity plates,” Stam said, “not state money.” He added, “The news story is that there are 122 centers around the state providing services for free for women who are in a crisis pregnancy. They need donations – not investigations.”

   It is illustrative that the first page of the Executive Summary to the report pulls the reader’s eye to this boldface quote: “Since 2006 the number of CPCs in North Carolina has almost doubled.” Can’t let that go unchecked, no siree.

   There are the usual complaints, including the standard lament that Crisis Pregnancy Centers maintain (quite properly) that there is a link between having an induced abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer, and that there are subsequent psychological complications. Since NARAL is loathe to admit that there are any negative consequences, it is impossible for them to admit that peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that there are.

   One other thing: if something is too good to be true, it is too good to be true. There is a story from NARAL’s “investigation” that most newspaper accounts picked up (which I won’t further circulate) that plays perfectly into NARAL’s hands. Obviously I cannot prove it did not happen, but the fact that it gives NARAL a colorful hook to demonstrate how “extreme” CPCS are ought to give any unbiased observer reason to pause.

   Let’s hope the North Carolina legislature is not duped by NARAL. And let’s also hope that the temporary injunction that is stopping the “Right to View” provision of North Carolina’s “Woman’s Right to Know” law from going into effect is lifted.