A University of Pennsylvania doctor appeared to compare crisis pregnancy centers to “terrorists” during a Friday hearing, accusing these pro-life centers of harming and targeting mothers.
Courtney Schreiber, chief of the Division of Family Planning at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine, spoke Friday at the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing on “Deceptive Practices of Anti-Abortion Centers II.”
Schreiber repeatedly criticized pro-life crisis pregnancy centers without mentioning that scores of these pro-life organizations have been vandalized with pro-abortion graffiti, attacked, or firebombed since the May leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
She also expressed concerns that pro-life groups are nefariously using private data that they collect from the pregnant women who come to their organizations.
Apparently comparing crisis pregnancy centers to terrorists, she asked, “Who knows what they are doing with that information, if they may be selling it, if they may be making data available to other terrorists or activists that can cause harm to patients or the providers to whom they actually wind up going to eventually to seek care.”
Schreiber and Penn Medicine did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal asking if the doctor stood by these remarks.
WATCH:
Alexis Sneller, policy analyst at the Pennsylvania Family Institute, told The Daily Signal on Monday that “while pregnancy care centers are providing critical services to tens of thousands of women and families in Pennsylvania, they’re also facing unprecedented attacks by the pro-abortion lobby.”
“It is shameful that pro-abortion politicians with the [Pennsylvania] Senate Democratic Policy Committee in Harrisburg are designing numerous taxpayer-funded hearings to attack pregnancy care centers that are providing such outstanding pregnancy help,” Sneller added.
“During these biased hearings,” she continued, “it has been inferred that people working at pregnancy centers are terrorists, along with making a slew of other false claims intended to vilify these essential centers. This should be a call for everyone to enhance their support of your local pregnancy care center.”
The Perelman School of Medicine touts Schreiber’s credentialing as clinical expertise in “family planning,” “miscarriage,” and “ectopic pregnancy.” Penn Medicine also says she has expertise in “transgender care,” including female-to-male sex change surgeries and transgender hormone replacement therapy.
During the hearing, Schreiber further decried state funding directed to crisis pregnancy centers, claiming that the state is funding “fake health care facilities.” She also told a story of a woman who went to a crisis pregnancy center and criticized the pro-life center for showing the pregnant mother ultrasounds of her baby, claiming that the pregnancy center lied about how old the baby was.
Schreiber repeatedly referred to the unborn baby as a “baby”— noticeable since many of her peers avoid such humanizing terminology.
In past testimony for the Women’s Law Project, she claimed that abortion “is almost always safer for a woman than carrying a pregnancy to term,” adding that “induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth.”
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