Catholic Review Online: City Council passes bill focused on pro-life pregnancy centers

George Matysek, Jr. reports that the Baltimore City Council passed a controversial bill focused on Pro-Life Pregnancy centers operating within Baltimore City. The bill could well prove to be a template for legislation in other locales. Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien had made his views known regarding this unprecedented move:

What do these pregnancy resource centers do that could possibly explain such unwarranted scrutiny by our City Council? Among the free help they offer are pregnancy tests, sonograms, maternity and baby clothes, confidential counseling and parenting classes. Assisting these centers in their good work are the people of the Gabriel Network, which supplements the invaluable life-affirming resources provided by pregnancy resource centers by connecting women in need with “angel friends.” These volunteers stay with women in crisis throughout their pregnancies and beyond, helping them find housing, taking them to prenatal appointments, assisting them in obtaining scholarships to finish school and helping them find the resources they need for themselves and their children. In fact, I have heard stories of “angel friends” still in contact and friendship with their former clients 10 years later. These pregnancy resource centers and angel friends do the work of the Good Samaritan, the work necessary to building a culture of life, and the work required of us to accompany our commitment as a pro-life Church.

Sadly, the discriminatory bill targeting these pro-life pregnancy centers – which was sent to the full Council on a 3-1 Committee vote – may threaten these centers’ ability to provide the competent, compassionate and free care they so lovingly provide. Not surprisingly to those who have encountered the Christ-like love shared with clients at these centers, not a single real client who had visited a pregnancy center in Baltimore City testified at the hearing last week in favor of the bill, though there was a pregnancy center client who testified against it.

The Baltimore Sun had a detailed report earlier today.