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Description of religious affiliation (RfC)

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These three statements are in contention:

• Should the lead say that CPCs are typically Christian in nature - or - often Christian in nature?
• Although the vast majority of CPCs are Christian - or - Though the majority of religious CPCs are Christian?
• Many require employees to comply with a statement of faith - or - Some require employees to comply with a statement of faith?

Schrandit argues that to comment about the prevalence of religious CPCs is original research, and advocates the latter phrasing; I argue that the sources fully support the former, and that:

• since Care Net and Heartbeat International are self-declared Christian organizations, to read a source that says three-quarters of American CPCs affiliate with them and write "typically" and "majority" falls under the routine calculations rule and is exempt from OR. (Other sources point out that some CPCs are run by the Roman Catholic Church and by other church groups, and CPCs outside the USA also appear to be largely Christian, so if it's the specific numbers that you want to discuss, we could open a new section in talk about whether three-fourths constitutes a "vast" majority or not.)
• if Care Net states that it is the largest CPC network in the USA, and that all its employees must comply with a statement of faith, it is not OR to say that "many" CPCs require employees to comply with a statement of faith.

-- Roscelese (talk) 05:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, also - we do actually have a source that says CPCs are "usually run by church groups," the source is already cited in the article, but I thought it was more nuanced and informational to make the mention in the lead an internal link to the section - thoughts? (Naturally this doesn't affect the latter two points.) Roscelese (talk) 18:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I thought this might fall under Misplaced Pages:When to cite#When a source may not be needed. It is a very common notion that CPCs are run by pro-life, Christian organizations. Through the citations of other sources, and the research Roscelese put into this, I think citations have demonstrated this. I'm not sure what Schrandit's argument is here. That the very common notion is actually a misconception? That most CPCs aren't pro-life? That most CPC's are run by Christian parent organizations? We'd need clear sources making such a counter claim. Are there any sources presented that make anything close to this argument? To me, this seems like an individual user is trying to distance CPCs from certain common labels, without a proper justification. Typically vs. often isn't a big deal to me, but the other two examples, I favor the first option over the second. I wouldn't mind removing "vast", but don't support including "religious" as it seems like almost a circular statement, and we can make a stronger statement than that. This isn't a case of "we don't really know who are behind CPCs, so we should be vague and ambiguous". This is a case of 1) we have a clear common notion or stereotype. 2) basic research shows these common notions are true 3) there are no sources making any contrary claims regarding the religious affiliations of CPCs. Right? Am I missing something, or are there sources I have overlooked? -Andrew c  19:05, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to challenge those notions, only put them in the proper connotations - CPCs are by and large run by pro-lifers but are not universally so. CPCs are often affiliated with a religious organization, often an Evangelical one but not universally so.

This is the first time I'm seeing this. With that in mind I think it is fair to say (and worthwhile to do so) that most CPCs are affiliated with a Christian organization, but outside of Carenet the nature of that affiliation remains uncertain. I'd think the contested sentance fragment in the opening paragraph would be better if it read "run by pro-life supporters and are typically affiliated with a Christian organization."

I continue to believe the sentence "Although the vast majority of CPCs are Christian, a Jewish CPC, called "In Shifra's Arms," also exists." is inaccurate, I think something along the lines of "Though the majority of CPCs are affiliated with a Christian organization, a Jewish CPC, called "In Shifra's Arms," also exists."

I am very uncomfortable with the sentence "CPCs outside the United States are also largely Christian." The citations given only say that many CPCs in the UK are run by Christians and that come Canadian CPCs are affiliated with American Christians. This does not justify the stated text.

Of the sentence "Many, however, require employees to comply with a statement of faith." 1. - This only speaks to CPCs in the US 2. - This is maybe 30% of CPCs in the US. I think "Some in the US require employees to comply with a statement of faith." is more accurate. - Schrandit (talk) 22:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Instead of "some" or "many", why not we be specific and say "Carenet affiliated CPCs"? Are there others as well? If so, we'd need a citation, and then we can consider other language. But for something so specific in the citation, we should make the text reflect that. As for the clause prefacing the Jewish CPC line, I'd be ok with either one, so I don't think that is a big deal at this point, to me at least. Overall, I think you are stressing the but are not universally so part a bit too much. In terms of non-Christian CPCs, we have a single example, the one Jewish one, and that is all, correct? -Andrew c  22:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know that is the only religious CPC that is not Christian, my "but not universally so" language is primarily concerned with the CPCs that are not affiliated with any religious group, some of whom are administered by governments. - Schrandit (talk) 23:17, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, good call on the Carenet. - Schrandit (talk) 23:21, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Schrandit, Heartbeat says that it is a "Christian association of faith-based pregnancy resource centers." I'll ask you the question I wondered about at the noticeboard: Do you think that those "faith-based pregnancy resource centers" are Muslim or Pagan? Or that Heartbeat is lying? It has to be one of the two.

We know about ~50 non-sectarian CPCs. We also know that over three-quarters of American CPCs (again, the country with the most CPCs) are religious. Even if you assume that every CPC we don't know about is non-sectarian, that still boils down to "typically Christian."

CareConfidential is (to all appearances, though the statement in the article is unsourced) the largest CPC network in the UK. Other CPCs appear either to be affiliated with Lifecharity (which, though I can't find a statement of faith, administers only one-third of the CPCs that CareConfidential does anyway), or to be run by churches or otherwise religious. This is all I have from my sources. If you have a source that supports the existence of a preponderance of secular CPCs in the UK, please provide it. If you don't, stop asking us to assume based on absolutely no evidence. Likewise Canada - if you can prove that most Canadian CPCs are both unaffiliated with the aforementioned Christian umbrella network and that they are not otherwise religious, go ahead and make those changes. (I have a source that opposes CPCs that says there are 200 in Canada; CAPSS apparently administers 71, but every other source I could find that commented on a Canadian CPC's religious affiliation said that it was Christian.)http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk:Crisis_pregnancy_center&action=edit

You're essentially asking us to assume that if we don't know that a CPC is religious, it must be secular. But that's bad math and bad policy. The sources we have - and I'll ask for the fifth or sixth time, if you have any other sources, please, show them to us - say that a preponderance of CPCs are Christian.

And finally, the largest CPC network in the United States is not a small number however you spin it, and CAPSS also makes affiliates comply with a statement of faith. I've added that. Roscelese (talk) 01:47, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

We know that around 3/4s of CPCs in the US are affiliated with a Christian organization. The exact nature of this relationship remains vague. To state that they are affiliated is precise, exact and accurate. To state that they are "Christian in nature" has an unknown meaning and depending on what it means to the reader, untrue.

If you were to state that most CPCs in the UK are affiliated with a Christian organization I wouldn't have objected, but you altered the text to read that most CPCs outside the United States are Christian. That is both vague and unproven.

I'm not asking you to state that CPCs operate along a secular philosophy unless they can be proven to operate along a Christian philosophy, I'm asking you to refrain from stating that CPCs operate along a Christian philosophy unless our sources state that they do. - Schrandit (talk) 02:35, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Schrandit, I've already pointed out that Care Net requires all affiliates to comply with a statement of faith and that Heartbeat describes its affiliates as "faith-based." Unless you have a source that claims that Care Net's affiliates and Heartbeat's website are lying, then sources indicate that the centers are Christian and no amount of obfuscation will change that.

Likewise, adding up all the CPCs in the world, religious or not, would probably still not outweigh the number of religious CPCs in the US. I am therefore reverting your edit about "a majority of CPCs in the US," because this is a juvenile attempt to pretend that the statement is not true of a majority of CPCs in general.

And finally, could you please point to a policy whereby editors are directed to ignore evidence based merely on the say-so of another editor? The source states that CareConfidential runs "Christian-based pregnancy crisis centres." Do you have any source that discredits this one? Or are we meant to just take your word for it that the BBC is not telling the truth? Roscelese (talk) 03:25, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Where did I say that the BBC was not telling the truth? - Schrandit (talk) 04:51, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

If you were to state that most CPCs in the UK are affiliated with a Christian organization I wouldn't have objected - when they are, in fact, "Christian-based pregnancy centres" per the BBC.

As for Canada, as I've said many times, any evidence you have would be appreciated. But your conjecture that all the Canadian CPCs we don't know about are secular does not belong in the article, when every source we have refers to Christian ones. Roscelese (talk) 05:03, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll say it again because you either didn't understand it or chose to ignore it. My objection is that you took a source that describes CPCS in the UK and Canada and used it to source a sentence that describes CPCs world-wide. That is unacceptable. - Schrandit (talk) 05:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

If there are individual countries that have more secular CPCs than religious ones, you're free to provide a source that says so (though, again, remembering not to violate WP:UNDUE). But it doesn't really matter how much you keep moving the goalposts or which new countries you bring up, because it's a simple question of math. If the UK has 150+ Christian CPCs and 50 secular ones, and Canada has 71 Christian CPCs and 130 unknown-but-definitely-not-all-secular ones, five (hypothetically) secular CPCs from France aren't going to balance that out. Especially not when you add in the other Christian CPCs abroad.

Go ahead, look through Heartbeat's directory. Find a majority of secular CPCs. It'll be a fun way to spend the evening. Roscelese (talk) 06:14, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

No. - Schrandit (talk) 10:32, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Hence my providing sources. I'll source the directory; it's not comprehensive, but it's the best source we have. As I said, it doesn't state outright that most centers are "Christian," but calculation is exempt from OR and enough centers in the directory are "Christian" to continue tipping the balance in that direction. I am reverting your vandalism; we've discussed all these changes, and you know quite well that you've no evidential support for any of yours.

I have a feeling, though, that - in spite of the fact that probably no source is even necessary - no source I can cite will make you stop removing information from this article. Isn't that why you're removing information about American CPCs after it's been more than adequately established that that information is indisputably true? I'm wondering the same thing as Andrew - What the hell is your agenda here? Why are you trying to make people believe that CPCs aren't "Christian"?Roscelese (talk) 15:00, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we just need to follow the sources in cases of disputes. Don't read more into the sources. Don't say something applies to all CPCs or all countries, if it only lists one or two. Don't imply that certain CPCs are secluar or not Christian, when no sources say that. While you are welcome to assume that the % of CPCs in the minority that fall outside of CareNet and Heartbeat are not Christian, we can't say or imply that without sources doing so. -Andrew c  16:57, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you think it's not appropriate, then, to go with Heartbeat's directory as a source for CPCs abroad? I looked through it, and while there are some that don't state a religious affiliation, there are also loads that are affiliated with Heartbeat, run by the RCC, or otherwise stated to be religious. With the predominance of religious CPCs in the UK and the large number in Canada, that does balance out to a predominance of religious CPCs even if some individual countries have predominantly secular CPCs, just because of the way the numbers work - 75% of CPCs being religious in a country with 200 CPCs is still more than 100% of CPCs being secular in a country with 7. (As I said to Schrandit, perhaps individual countries may have more secular CPCs than religious, and we could totally get into that - it would be really interesting to see if the "pro-life" movement in laïciste France is more religious or more secular. But that doesn't change the fact that the majority of CPCs are religious). Roscelese (talk) 20:14, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

No. You can't just assume something is true until it has been proven false. What is wrong with just providing the information listed in our sources? - Schrandit (talk) 22:37, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Dude, I'm not "assuming something is true until it has been proven false," I'm saying that our sources tell us about CPCs that are mostly Christian. Your "There might be secular CPCs somewhere, you never know!" is not a source on par with the sources we have. Roscelese (talk) 23:14, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, I think Schrandit has a point here: we need to just get the facts from reliable sources, not try to infer what's not really stated. Dylan Flaherty 03:38, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I concur with Schrandit and Dylan Flaherty. Cloonmore (talk) 04:11, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, then I'll find a way of phrasing the intro to that paragraph that will hopefully suit you. While you're both here, care to comment on Schrandit's repeated change of "Christian" to "affiliated with a Christian organization," which, as I pointed out elsewhere, is a deliberate misrepresentation of the sources? Roscelese (talk) 04:19, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

You have a tendency to write sarcastic summations of arguments and them ascribe them mine. I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that in the future.

The conversation seems to be meandering in a few different directions, I'm going to try to segment it into specific threads, any one feel free to add another that you feel is worthy of discussion. - Schrandit (talk) 06:04, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

"Christian" v. "affiliated with a Christian organization"

Describing a center (any sort of center) as "Christian" can be problematic. If a center (or any sort of a charity) is administered by or is a ministry of a particular Church that is pretty straight forward but CPCs run a huge gambit, some are connected to Churches, others are not, some desire Christian volunteers, others do not, some evangelize, others do not. There are non-Christians working at Christian centers, there are Christians working at non-Christan centers. To describe swaths of non-profits as "Christian" is non-specific and, depending on the definition being operated under, untrue. Conversely, to describe them as "affiliated with a Christian organization" is specific, direct, true and can be expanded upon. - Schrandit (talk) 06:04, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

*sigh* We have reliable sources that say that over 75% of CPCs in the United States (once again, the country with by far the most CPCs) are indisputably Christian. We have more reliable sources saying a large number outside the US are indisputably Christian as well. It's not your job to contest the statement that an organization is a "Christian association of faith-based pregnancy centers" or runs "Christian-based pregnancy crisis centres." You are not the arbiter of who is and is not Christian enough.

If you have a source that indicates that any of these centers are actually lying about their affiliates or affiliation policies, please, share it. If you have a source that indicates that the BBC is lying about CareConfidential's religious nature or that Time is lying about the number of centers affiliated with Care Net and Heartbeat, please, share it. Until then, the changes you're suggesting are a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the sources. Roscelese (talk) 06:18, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Schrandit's suggested wording seems to me completely unremarkable and more accurate. "Christian" as a stand-alone modifier connotes that the primary or significant purpose of a center is to proselytize or evangelize. I don't see any evidence that that's the purpose of these centers (thought it may be true of some), but it is no doubt true that many of the founders and volunteers are animated by their personal Christian zeal and beliefs and that many/most of the centers have some kind of affiliation with a Christian church, organization or mission. Therefore, describing the centers as "affiliated with a Christian organization" is more accurate and less prone to confusing or misleading the reader. Cloonmore (talk) 11:46, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

It may seem to you that that's the implication, but Misplaced Pages appears to be have no problem calling self-described and reliably described "Christian" (etc) organizations by that name. Is Human Life International not really Roman Catholic, then? Is Focus on the Family not Christian enough because their primary purpose isn't to evangelize? How about Hadassah - are you going to tell 270,000 women that their organization isn't really Jewish?

Please point to a consensus that indicates that it's right to discard all the sources. Otherwise, please explain why your personal opinion trumps both sources and policy. Roscelese (talk) 16:31, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Catholic organizations are easier to classify because there is usually the Catholic Directory or the USCCB to settle the matter. Thus, for example, notwithstanding its name, Catholics for Choice is not a Catholic organization. Anyway, you appear to be changing the subject. We're not talking about Hadassah but about CPCs. I don't understand the objection to "affiliated with a Christian organization." And I haven't suggested that sources be discarded, so that seems a red herring. Cloonmore (talk) 03:01, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

So, Focus on the Family? Not Christian enough?

When you say "All these sources describe the organizations as Christian, but I don't think they're Christian, so let's not call them Christian," you are discarding the sources.

My objection to "affiliated with a Christian organization" is that that's not what the sources say. They say the centers are "Christian." To say otherwise, without other sources to back up your statement, is to misrepresent the sources we have in what I think is a purposeful attempt to make users believe that CPCs are something that they are not (ie. secular).

You haven't answered my question - why is your personal opinion supposed to be authoritative here? Roscelese (talk) 03:50, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Would you please knock it off with the straw men?

The definition of "Christian" is unfixed and it unclear what is meant by it, and what can be inferred by it. Are they Christian like Billy Graham or Christian like the Salvation Army or Christian like the nation of Hungary? Specificity is always preferable I see no margin in leaving this open-ended. - Schrandit (talk) 04:38, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

The fact that we have sources that say they're Christian means that we don't need to pontificate about what "Christian" means. Why do you want to ignore the sources?

Your point, in addition to being completely against standing policy, is specious in its own right. All it does is remove the controversy one level back: what are these "Christian" organizations they're affiliated with? Are they Christian like Billy Graham or Christian like the Salvation Army or Christian like the nation of Hungary? No, how about we just go with what the sources tell us instead of individual editors' hand-wringing about the true meaning of Christianity? Roscelese (talk) 04:42, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

"we don't need to pontificate about what "Christian" means." Aren't you the editor that just launched this community into a week and a half of pontification over what "Pro-life" means?

I'd love noting more to that to quote our sources, to be more specific. - Schrandit (talk) 04:58, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

No, as far as I know, no editor has done that. I did raise a discussion on whether we can describe a law (not a person, who can self-identify) with a blatantly non-neutral term, though. I seem to recall that back then, you were on the side of allowing anything and everything, even things that can't actually do so, to "self-identify." How far away that seems now, when you reject the descriptions provided not only by reliable third-party sources (which you, on the other hand, could not provide in the "pro-life" discussion) but by the organizations themselves! I guess a week and a half is a long time.

The sources are already quoted in the body of the article. Has it been a while since you read it? Because that would imply that you've been reverting my edits without looking at them, which would really be rude. Maybe you should look at the article and refresh your memory. Roscelese (talk) 05:05, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

If you're just going to insult folks then there isn't a point in keeping this up. I've got a consensus on my side (though a slim one) and I'm moving on with it. Let me know if you find anything else (a new source, a precedent somewhere else) that you think would change folks' minds or if you are particularly aggrieved by this and I'll let you know about the channels for recourse. - Schrandit (talk) 08:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

You most certainly have not. Even if you had an overwhelming majority vote, which you don't, if everyone in that majority had arguments like "we should discard all sources because they don't agree with me as to what Christianity is" and "what is Christianity? we just don't know," that would be a clear contravention of existing practice and existing policy and would probably be contested if there was any oversight. Consensus needs to take arguments into account. (If you follow AfD, as I do, you'll notice that articles sometimes get deleted when the vote to delete is the minority one, because the arguments the majority voters provided showed ignorance of standing policy.)

I'm opening another RfC to get a broader range of opinion (ie. more than three people, because that is not consensus) for this specific issue. I think it's ridiculous, frankly, to open an RfC to ask, essentially, "Is Misplaced Pages ever allowed to use the word 'Christian'," but hey, I'm not the one arguing that we're not. I'll also invite Andrew C and Dylan Flaherty back. Roscelese (talk) 16:37, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

This one is simple: Of course they're Christian. We have reliable sources stating that the overwhelming majority are explicitly Christian. This is not unsourced or in any way controversial. The centers self-identify as Christian and/or are affiliated/staffed/funded by Christian churches. Some of the larger ones require their staff to sign a statement of faith in which they swear that they are Christian.

Why are we even discussing this? They're Christian. Dylan Flaherty 01:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

"Medical services"

That phrase has never set well with me. Does advice of a medical nature constitute a medical service? Could we shift to something like "The majority of CPCs do not conduct medical operations"? - Schrandit (talk) 04:11, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Since the "medical services" some offer appear to be STD testing and pregnancy tests, "medical services" is probably better than "medical operations." "Operation" has a connotation in the medical context that isn't at all what we're talking about, and if you take it in the general sense, I'm not sure how it differs from "services." Is there another phrasing that you think might be better? Roscelese (talk) 05:16, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Surely STD testing is a medical service? - Schrandit (talk) 11:01, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the gist was that most don't offer that, no? Roscelese (talk) 16:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll hunt around for a source, I was under the impression that most of them provide pregnancy testing etc. - Schrandit (talk) 17:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Description of religious affiliation, take 2 (RfC)

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. Within 24 hours, this page will be added to the following list: Religion and philosophy When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

Should we describe CPCs as typically Christian or typically affiliated with a Christian organization?

Cloonmore argues that an organization that does not have proselytism as a primary or otherwise significant goal cannot be named as "Christian." Schrandit argues that the term "Christian" is too vague and open-ended to use to describe these organizations.

I (Roscelese) argue that the sources, both first-party and third-party, call the centers "Christian" and that to say otherwise is to misrepresent them.

-- Roscelese (talk) 16:37, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Your RfC is improper as it violates the fundamental principle of neutrality. I did not argue that "an organization that does not have proselytism as a primary or otherwise significant goal cannot be named as 'Christian.'" You've reaffirmed your penchant for straw men. Cloonmore (talk) 01:38, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you provide what you feel is a more accurate description of your position? Since you said "'Christian' as a stand-alone modifier connotes that the primary or significant purpose of a center is to proselytize or evangelize," it really seemed like you meant that "Christian" as a stand-alone modifier connotes that the primary or significant purpose of a center is to proselytize or evangelize. Forgive me if you were using coded language that I didn't understand. Roscelese (talk) 01:44, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

For the reasons explained above, I support "typically Christian", or even "primarily Christian". Dylan Flaherty 01:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

What are your sources? You mention them frequently but in scrolling through the lengthy posts above, I can't quite tell. For example, while Heartbeat International plainly appears to be a Christian organization, I don't see anything in its affiliations standards that indicates that its CPC affiliates are uniformly Christian. Cloonmore (talk) 02:47, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

You need to read your own sources better. The site you linked to lists Heartbeat International as a "Christian, interdenominational association", and the directory page says, "Connect with 4,500+ pro-life services ministries worldwide". Note the word "ministries". I'm not sure what else there is to talk about. Dylan Flaherty 04:53, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, but you need to read my comments better. I acknowledged that Heartbeat Intl appears to be a Christian organization. Is it your contention that any CPC that affiliates with Heartbeat is, therefore, de facto, a "Christian organization"? Where's the support? You're not basing that assertion on the use of the word '"ministries" in the HBI directory, are you? Because, as your careful reading no doubt revealed to you, the majority of the CPC's listed in directory are not affiliates of HBI. Further, HBI's affiliate application does not require or even presume that an affiliate is Christian. Cloonmore (talk) 15:22, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it lists even the CPC's that aren't affiliates among the "ministries"; I think you'll agree that a ministry is inherently religious. Not only is HBI Christian, but as I pointed out, it's a "Christian, interdenominational association", which means that its mission is to link Christians together regardless of (Christian) denomination. If a completely secular pro-life organization became affiliated with HBI, it would no longer be completely secular. Dylan Flaherty 16:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, as I pointed out, the majority of the CPCs listed are not affiliates of HBI. So how can the directory be any basis for asserting the supposedly "Christian" nature of those listed CPCs? And, no, I would not agree that because HBI appears to call all CPCs "ministries," whether HBI affiliates or not, that that proves that all CPCs are "Christian." And I don't see any support for your conclusions about HBI's "mission." Cloonmore (talk) 17:05, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it lists even the CPC's that aren't affiliates among the "ministries"; I think you'll agree that a ministry is inherently religious. Not only is HBI Christian, but as I pointed out, it's a "Christian, interdenominational association", which means that its mission is to link Christians together regardless of (Christian) denomination. If a completely secular pro-life organization became affiliated with HBI, it would no longer be completely secular. Dylan Flaherty 18:11, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you a bot? Cloonmore (talk) 18:38, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm making a WP:POINT by repeating my point, as you did not address it. Dylan Flaherty 18:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Please don't cut and paste your own comment. You're not making a point; your wasting people's time. Anyway, I did indeed address your point. It has no support. Cloonmore (talk) 19:23, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Since you have not addressed my point (either time), it stands. Dylan Flaherty 20:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

That's correct. Your statements that (1) HBI's "mission is to link Christians together regardless of (Christian) denomination", and (2) "If a completely secular pro-life organization became affiliated with HBI, it would no longer be completely secular" stand. They stand as unsupported statements of opinion, FWIW. They're also irrelevant to the RfC, since no one disputes that an affiliate of HBI -- whether "secular" or not -- would by definition be "affiliated with a Christian organization." Cloonmore (talk) 20:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

• Typically Christian. If we scan the important secondary sources, we see that The National Catholic Register refers to Hearbeat Intl as "an association of 1,100 Christian crisis-pregnancy centers". The Star-Telegram wrote that the CPCs, a "network of ministries", "are often staffed by volunteers from religious ministries". Binksternet (talk) 23:21, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm willing to accept this as a compromise. Dylan Flaherty 02:50, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Outside of the box thought - Religious affiliation/connection doesn't seem to be a huge deal. How about we don't a fuss of it in the opening and just quote different secondary sources in the body to describe them? - Schrandit (talk) 05:52, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

If you like, you can open an RfC to see what people think of that proposal. I think it's relevant for the lead. Roscelese (talk) 06:42, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The word "typically" is misleading and prone to confusing the reader. In fact, in the place where abortion is most prevalent in the USA -- New York City, the undisputed abortion capital of America -- Christian affiliation is not typical. The vast majority of CPCs in the city are run by EMC Frontline, which is not affiliated with any church. Cloonmore (talk) 15:22, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Chris Slattery, founder of EMC Frontline, is a member of Christian Professionals Worldwide and Christian Business Leaders Network. The organization's 40 Days for Life campaign involved prayer vigils outside of abortion clinics. Slattery calls modern-day pregnancy clinics "ministries". Binksternet (talk) 17:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

That's probably worth noting in the article, but it still wouldn't justify calling those CPCs "Christian". What do y'all think about removing it from the lead and just dealing with it in depth in the body? - Schrandit (talk) 17:32, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Slattery's membership in Christian Professionals Worldwide or Christian Business Leaders Network tells us nothing about EMC. No doubt they're both good fundraising networks. (Would a WalMart executive's membership in the CBLN make WalMart "Christian"?) Agree that "ministry" has a religious connotation, but not necessarily and not exclusively Christian. HBI likewise refers to all CPCs in its directory as "ministries," whether affiliated or not. (And, again, see HBI's affiliate application, which specifically asks whether the applicant considers itself a Christian ministry, thus demonstrating that some applicants/affiliates do not.) EMC's 40 Days for Life campaign is obviously a way to mobilize supporters. It does not justify designating EMC Frontline "Christian." Agree that addressing the issue in the body makes sense. There are way too many variations to reduce the Christian aspects of many CPC's to a single sentence with ambiguous modifiers like "typically Christian." Cloonmore (talk) 19:59, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Come on now, Cloonmore. You're grasping at straws here. 1. The number of abortion providers in NYC is irrelevant because it is not the same thing as the number of CPCs in NYC 2. We already have proof that most CPCs are Christian, and this doesn't contradict it at all. Even if you assume that EMC Frontline is totally and completely secular, which would appear to be a wrong assumption because the centers are "ministries," that still wouldn't contraindicate the use of "typically Christian" because EMC is not in charge of a majority of CPCs.

I'm not sure why you keep pulling out this thing about HBI calling all the centers in its directory "ministries." That would seem to subvert your point rather than enforce it, unless you for some reason think that an organization must be affiliated with HBI in order to be Christian. Anyway, Heartbeat describes its centers as ministries and as faith-based organizations, and unless you can prove that there's some substantial Jewish or Muslim presence (good luck - Shifra's was the only Jewish one I found, and I couldn't find any Muslim ones) then we have to take the source's word for it that they're Christian, because they say they're a Christian association.

Could you point to a standard that indicates that "ministry" is typically used without reference to Christianity? Because I'm Jewish, and we sure don't call our projects ministries. Roscelese (talk) 21:01, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, you're right that a Jewish organization is unlikely to use the term "ministry", but it's not at all unlikely for a Christian interdenominational organization, such as HBI, to use that term in reference to a Jewish organization. I'm sure no insult was intended. It's just that, as you pointed out, the overwhelming majority of CBC's are admittedly (Christian) ministries. Dylan Flaherty 21:24, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Roscelese, I'd say that pointing to Chris Slattery's membership in the Christian Business Leaders Network as proof that EMC is "Christian" is the very definition of straw-grasping. As Dylan Flaherty suggests, Christians will call most anything that involves service to others a "ministry," including Jews ministering to fellow Jews. I'm not sure what you mean by requesting a "standard," but it is an exceedingly common phenomenon for Catholics and Protestants to label anything from Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon to blood drives and Girl Scouts to bingo (!!!) as a "ministry." I suspect you'd agree that AA and Girl Scouts aren't "Christian" organizations simply by virtue of the fact that they're viewed as ministries of many Christian communities.

You say that you "already have proof that most CPCs are Christian." I've already asked for that proof, and I ask again because maybe I've missed it amidst the glut of imprecise use of terms and language in these comments. Thanks. Cloonmore (talk) 01:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I think I already directed you to the sources in the article. Care Net makes every employee of every affiliate comply with a statement that swears they are Christian, Heartbeat states that it is a "Christian association of faith-based crisis pregnancy centers," and these two together administer three-quarters of CPCs in the United States (the country with by far the most CPCs). The largest network in the UK also runs "Christian-based pregnancy crisis centres." The largest network in Canada also makes affiliates comply with a statement of faith. What appears to be the largest network in Latin America states that it complies with Catholic teaching. Other unaffiliated CPCs all over the world are run by church groups.

Are you trying to make some point about Heartbeat's affiliates being secular? Then find a source that indicates that Heartbeat is not telling the truth when it describes the centers as "faith-based."

Yours and Dylan's point about Christian organizations describing everything as a ministry is well-taken, but, as I said above, it's a tangent because, even if EMC Frontline is completely secular, the numbers still say that most CPCs are Christian. (Al-Anon was a poor choice of example for a secular "ministry" on your part. Have you ever taken a look at the 12-step program? But this, like this entire EMC Frontline tangent, is irrelevant. Let's focus on what we know - that, until you provide sources that say the contrary, all our information indicates that these centers are predominantly Christian.) Roscelese (talk) 01:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad that you now agree that the "ministry" argument is a red herring, Roscalese. As for your sources, let's start with the good ol' US of A. I agree that CareNet affiliates, which are required to affirm CareNet's Statement of Faith, can fairly be described as Christian. I see no such evidence as to Heartbeat Int'l or Birthright affiliates. Cloonmore (talk) 03:08, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Heartbeat describes itself as a "Christian association of faith-based pregnancy resource centers." Unless you're arguing that these "faith-based" organizations are predominantly Jewish, or that Heartbeat is lying about their being faith-based? Roscelese (talk) 03:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not arguing anything about the nature of "faith" at the moment. I'm asking for the sources for your "Christian" assertion, and I don't see any that state that all HBI affiliates are Christian. HBI does not appear to require an affirmation of faith, as does CareNet, and HBI's affiliate application strongly implies that not all its affiliates are Christian ministries. You'd have to agree that its affiliates are certainly not "Christian" in the sense that CareNet mandates. Cloonmore (talk) 14:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The source I keep referring to is Heartbeat's "About Us," already cited in the article. Did you actually read the article? They describe themselves as a "Christian association of faith-based pregnancy resource centers" whose materials are "consistent with Biblical principles." Obviously they're not exactly the same as Care Net, because Care Net is specifically evangelical and Heartbeat is interdenominational, but they describe themselves as Christian and faith-based. I don't think there's really anything to question in the wording there - you'd need to provide a source that states that this affirmation is actually false. Roscelese (talk) 15:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I don't think Christian organizations would refer to secular organizations as ministries. However, we may well use this typically Christian term to refer to non-Christian but non-secular equivalents of ministries. The example above is that single Jewish CPC you found. Regardless, it's very clear that the overwhelming majority of CPC's are just plain Christian. I see no shame in this and can't imagine why anyone would want to make this any less clear. Dylan Flaherty 02:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The only CPC I've had any close involvement in was run by a Catholic church I attended some years ago, so I realize that my own experiences are perhaps biased. That's why I decided to do some basic research. Within a minute or two, I found the EMC Frontline Pregnancy Centers Internship site, which includes these words:

Abortion starts with a lack of understanding the true purpose of sex. Until the world realizes the true beauty of God's perfect plan for marriage, we will have clients much like these girls coming to our centers or worse going to Emily's. And so we work...to save lives, to change the world...

We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

Beautiful and true, but hardly secular. It occurred me, as no doubt it occurs to you now, that this might just be one person's view, taken out of context, so I changed my search to include Slattery. The first thing that showed up was an essay in which he said:

The institution of pro-life pregnancy centers is the fruit of a movement that has existed for many years. In the United States, such establishments go far back through Christian ministries such as Catholic hospitals and Christian maternity homes. What Time believes it recently uncovered as a new angle to pro-life activism has been in widespread practice for some 200 years.

In fact, today's centers are a scaled-down version of the original Catholic-Protestant outreaches that began in the mid 1800s. Catholic hospitals, the Salvation Army, the Christian Aid Society and many early adoption agencies provided similar, though antiquated, services to what current pregnancy resource centers do. But today's ministries are much more decentralized and more specialized than those of old.

Note how he speaks of "today's ministries", not "today's secular, non-profit organizations". In his own words, CPC's are Christian ministries, not secular at all. Again, this does not seem to be the least bit ambiguous. CPC's are Christian ministries, except for the few that Jewish ministries or Muslim ministries. Dylan Flaherty 20:31, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

• RfC comment - The sources seem to most clearly indicate that CPC are "associated with Christian ministries," and it seems fairly clear that that means, in context, pro-life Christian ministries. On that basis, I think saying that they are associated with pro-life Christian ministries is probably the best available alternative. Having said that, if there are numerous ministries involved which are clearly not Christian, but perhaps Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever, then it would probably make sense to have the text say that the CPCs are associated with a number of pro-life religious ministries. It does seem that the organization itself is a self-described Christian group, so perhaps saying that it is a Christian organization which seeks to link and support other pro-life ministries might be the best option. That would avoid dealing with whether all the other affiliates are necessarily Christian. Unless all of these organizations are clearly related directly to Christianity in some way, and they may not be, I think it would perhaps be best to avoid making any statements about their own affiliation, aside from the fact that they are all, apparently, pro-life to some extent. So what do we think of saying the umbrella organization is a Christian organization which seeks to promote the pro-life agenda, and (maybe) that the bulk of the affiliated organizations are apparently fairly clearly promoting pro-life in a way conducive to the general Christian viewpoint? John Carter (talk) 21:53, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you might be getting a bit confused? We're not just talking about EMC Frontline here - that might be a relevant discussion if we were discussing an article on EMC Frontline, but as it is, that's a tangent that Cloonmore brought up which does not change the fact that all the sources we have indicate that most CPCs are "Christian." Not just "affiliated" or "associated." Roscelese (talk) 22:00, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

That's entirely correct. Moreover, it's not that they're "pro-life to some extent", they're just plain pro-life. We need less weaseling and more plain-speaking. CPC's are Christian, pro-life ministries. Dylan Flaherty 22:26, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think John Carter's comment reflect any confusion. His suggestion of an alternate phrasing, "associated with Christian ministries" is an admirable attempt to propose something that might be satisfactory to all. Cloonmore (talk) 01:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

That's no compromise between what we're advocating and what you're advocating, it's just another phrasing of what you're advocating - and, like the original phrasing of what you're advocating, is a misrepresentation of all the sources.

I suggested that John Carter might be confused because he's referring repeatedly to one umbrella organization, whereas we know there are several - which made me think he might be referring only to EMC Frontline. Roscelese (talk) 01:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what John meant, but our sources are clear on this matter. CPC's are Christian. Dylan Flaherty 02:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear, what do you mean when you say "CPC's are Christian"? - Schrandit (talk) 06:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what Dylan Flaherty means, but I mean "they describe themselves as Christian, third-party sources describe them as Christian, they require all their staff to be Christian, they proselytize Christianity, and/or their information is Bible-based." What more are you looking for? Roscelese (talk) 15:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree that I'm not at all clear what Dylan means. Three organizations are listed in the lede, which is, honestly, way to short. Of those three, the first two are self-described as Christian - ], at least according to the existing stub we have on it, makes no direct reference to itself as a specifically Christian connection.

It would help a lot if this RfC were a bit clearer regarding the details of the proposal. Right now, I see the existing sentence in the lead about the Christian nature of these organizations, with the "by and large" quotation and citation, as being maybe the point of contention. I have to say that, unless a clear and specific linkage of Birthright International to Christianity is established, that the existing sentence should be changed, until and unless Birthright is clearly established as clearly Christian. In this sense, I suppose we would be looking for an indication that the organization is organized by Christians to promote a specifically Christian pro-life agenda.

If the point of contention is the lead, I would think that expanding it, perhaps to say something like (X) of the early CPCs were established by Christian organizations to promote a Christian pro-life agenda, and that subsequently some other organizations, perhaps like Birthright International, have been established to promote the pro-life agenda without having a necessarily Christian motivation. I would be specifically interested whether it can be verified that Birthright International requires that all of its staff be Christians and that all of its affiliated organizations prosletyze and have Bible-based information. John Carter (talk) 17:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

John, thank you for participating in this discussion. All too often, controversy scares away editors and leaves only the few and impassioned, who are then permanently at loggerheads.

I think that expanding the lead is a good idea, on the whole. Sometimes it's hard to be neutral while also being very brief. The real issue is content.

Let me clarify my statement about Christianity: CPC's are Christian ministries, staffed by Christians who follow the traditional Christian belief in the immorality of abortion, and supported financially by Christian churches. The two largest organizations are explicitly Christian, with one requiring participants to sign an oath of faith. According to one study, almost all CPC's mention religion and many cite religious passages. Another article says "Most of the 2,300 CPCs in the country operate under three umbrella groups: Care Net, Heartbeat International and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA)." The first two are, as discussed, Christian. A quick google confirms that the third is headed by the former President of Care Net, which used to be called Christian Action Counsel.

Nobody denies that there are a some CPC's that are relatively secular (in terms of the organization, that is, not the staff), but I don't believe anyone can credibly deny that these are exceptional. There are even a very few that are religious but not Christian. Our reliable sources confirm this and no original research on our part is needed. We can argue over whether CPC's are 99% Christian or only 95%, and the actual figure will depend (as you suggested) on how we define the criteria. However, no matter how we slice it, the is no question about CPC's being Christian; none whatsoever.

It is not a secret, open or otherwise, that the overwhelming majority of CPC's are Christian and I have no idea why anyone would want to downplay or conceal this. If anything, we should be proud of our willingness to reach out to those in need instead of simply pushing for criminalization. If I take this a little personally, it may be because I contributed to a CPC through my church, and the center made no attempt to hide this affiliation. Dylan Flaherty 18:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

If there are sources which are reliable as per WP:RS that give a definite percentage, or a minimum percentage, of how many of these centers are explicitly Christian in some sense, I can't see any objections to using the numbers they give. However, we really do, in general, try to avoid generalities if we have any sort of more concrete material to deal with. NIFLA is not currently mentioned in the lede (I think), and I don't think there are any objections to having the lede changed if the sources indicate it should be. And I don't have any problems with a Christian wanting the Christianity of the majority of the centers to be made clear. The problem is in using non-specific language if more specific language is available. Right now, I don't see exactly what material in the article as it currently exists that this RfC is supposed to address in some way, which is why I mentioned the lede. If some other sections are more centrally being considered, it would be helpful to know which. John Carter (talk) 20:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doing basic math on data from reliable sources doesn't constitute original research. If so, it is trivial to show that the majority of CPC's are, by one definition or another, Christian. If we can get over 2/3's, I think "overwhelming majority" would be reasonable. There should also be no question about the fact that CPC's are pro-life in nature, which the current lead leaves ambiguous. Dylan Flaherty 20:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

John - A few points. 1) Birthright isn't explicitly Christian (at least in the minimal research I did, which was to go to their "about us" page and cite the statement that they didn't evangelize - they also don't have a religious test in order to volunteer). However, Care Net and Heartbeat are much larger (as stated in the article, they manage 3/4 of American CPCs; unaffiliated ones are also Christian), and the largest networks in the UK and Canada are also Christian. While we don't have a source that states "X% of CPCs are Christian," we do have sources that state that Care Net and Heartbeat are Christian, and a source that states that 3/4 of American CPCs are affiliated with them. We have other sources which indicate the presence of even more Christian CPCs both in the USA and abroad. I don't think it's OR to say that most CPCs are Christian - as Dylan points out, basic math is traditionally exempt, and I see no reason to make an exception for this one article.

You mention your unwillingness to be "using non-specific language if more specific language is available" - actually, that's exactly my problem with the current lead, as Schrandit and Cloonmore want it to be stated. Sure, CPCs are typically associated with Christian organizations. But that's not as specific as the information found in our sources - which is that the centers are Christian.

Dylan - Minor point, Heartbeat doesn't require a statement of faith. They're the ones that describe themselves as a "Christian association of faith-based pregnancy resource centers," so it's not as if their religiosity is in doubt - I just wanted to correct that point. CAPSS requires it, but it isn't as large (it's the largest one in Canada, but Canada doesn't have as many). Roscelese (talk) 22:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, I'm sorry if I was unclear, but I wasn't suggesting that Heartbeat requires a statement of faith: I meant Care Net, which does. Thank you for keeping me honest; we may be on opposite sides in some ways, but I think we both care about the truth. Dylan Flaherty 01:27, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I think I accidentally skimmed over "with one" in that comment. Sorry. Roscelese (talk) 04:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

On the topic of the Care Net statement of faith, I just found something interesting and relevant. As a Catholic, I could not help noticing that the statement conflicted with doctrine, particularly with regard to the affirmation of sola scriptura and the concommitent rejection of ex cathedra. It turns out that I'm hardly the first to run into this obstacle, so Care Net has gone out of its way to make room for my religion. I'm not sure that this needs direct mention in the article, but it does help us to understand that Care Net is not limited to Protestants. Dylan Flaherty 01:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

We've gone from red herrings about the supposed significance of the word "ministry" to cataloging a CPC's founder's membership in a Christian business person's network, so I guess it's only fitting that we conclude with Catholic theology. This ill-conceived RfC has obviously run its course, perhaps (though wrongly) leading some to conclude that they could take matters into their own hands.

Tsk tsk. I'm reverting improper edits and opening a new thread. Cloonmore (talk) 02:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Per BRD, I have reverted the pair of bold edits, so that we can discuss them here. Let's. Dylan Flaherty 03:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

If the criteria for being Christian is having a mostly Christian staff then most Burger Kings are Christian. Also, why were we taking NARAL's word at face value? - Schrandit (talk) 02:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it's very fair to say that Care Net and Heartbeat are Christian in a way that Burger King will never be. For example, the person who makes a BK burger requires a week of training in clown college, not a statement of faith. We definitely don't have to take NARAL's word as fact, but we also can't ignore it. The right way is to find some refutation to balance it with, if that's available. Let's discuss this here before we get the page Protected. Dylan Flaherty 03:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In fact, I don't trust NARAL, so I decided to check for myself. From the Care Net website, I was able to find their FAQ on abortion risks, at http://www.optionline.org/questions/considering-abortion/. It took no effort at all to find inaccuracies. Now, this is, by definition, original research. However, we also have almost a dozen cited reliable sources that concur. The sentence about CPC's and misleading information is absolutely justified and belongs in the lead. I have strongly urged Cloonmore to replace it, so that we can avoid the appearance of an edit war. Dylan Flaherty 03:25, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Christian again

So let's recap, kids! CareNet affiliates are no doubt Christian because CareNet requires them to affirm such. Heartbeat International is a "Christian association" but there is no evidence that it requires its affiliates to affirm any kind of Christian faith or that its affiliates in fact profess Christian faith or doctrine. Birthright Int'l and NIFLA have no apparent religious test for affiliation. Have I missed something? Is there some other primary proof out there of the supposed "Christian" designation of the affiliates of HBI, Birthright or NIFLA? Cloonmore (talk) 03:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

We've gone over this a few times already. I'm not sure what to tell you that you don't already know. I'm also not willing to discuss this any further until the sentence about misleading information about abortion risks is restored, because major issues take precedence over minor ones. Dylan Flaherty 03:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we've been over it in a long, digressive RfC that consisted of more rambling talk than citing to reliable sources. Hence, the new thread. So, for example, if there is some RS that shows that HBI's affiliates are "Christian," please share it. Note, the question is whether HBI's affiliates are "Christian"; that's the claim being made. (So it does not prove the point to show, for example, that HBI itself is Christian, or that its affiliates are "faith-based"). Cloonmore (talk) 04:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Like I've said a number of times - unless you can prove that a substantial portion of HBI's "faith-based pregnancy resource centers," which when taken all together form a "Christian association" and whose materials are "consistent with Biblical principles" - unless you can prove, by citing a source, that a substantial portion of them are any religion other than Christian (or unless you can somehow discredit Heartbeat's statement about itself), then we've got to take the source's word for it. That's how Misplaced Pages works. (Birthright and NIFLA have no apparent religious test, but guess what? They run, at most, a quarter of American CPCs, and we know that other CPCs among that quarter are religious. Birthright and NIFLA being completely secular would not challenge in any way the assertion that CPCs are mostly Christian.) We have the centers' word that they are Christian. What other "primary proof" do you need?

Roscelese (talk) 04:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we know that HBI is a "Cristian association." That does not prove that every or any affiliate of HBI is Christian. You're making an unwarranted leap to claim otherwise and conflating HBI with any CPC that affiliates with it. And please point me to the RS that says that Birthright and NIFLA combined account for "at most, a quarter of American CPCs"? Thanks. Cloonmore (talk) 12:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you know what an association is, Cloonmore? It's not just a synonym for "organization." "Organization" might mean that HBI's top-level administration were Christian, but not imply anything about their affiliates. "Christian association of faith-based pregnancy resource centers" cannot be interpreted any other way, except deliberately.

I must have said this about six times by now - What other faith are you insisting all of these centers might be based on?

please point me to the RS that says that Birthright and NIFLA combined account for "at most, a quarter of American CPCs" - Check it out. Care Net and Heartbeat account for 3/4 of American CPCs. Math time!

I mean, I suppose it's possible that some of them might affiliate with the same centers, but that doesn't help your point - a center being affiliated with both Birthright and Heartbeat would mean that, though it might not evangelize (Birthright), it's still described as Christian (HBI).

You keep asking me to provide proof as though it isn't already cited in the article. Have you read the article, Cloonmore? Roscelese (talk) 16:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it is worthy of note that they say that they are a Christian association of CPCs, not a association of Christian CPCs. - Schrandit (talk) 17:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how this distinction fairs, given that they describe the CPC's in their directory as ministries. I don't know of any secular ministries. Of course, if a completely secular CPC were to be associated with a Christian interdenominational association, it would no longer be completely secular. No matter how I look at this, I don't see any way to avoid the conclusion that CPC's are Christian. Dylan Flaherty 17:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In the absence of any new evidence or arguments on your part, I consider this discussion concluded, per WP:ICAN'THEARYOU. These points have been refuted enough times that your continual refusal to recognize the consensus amount to tendentious editing. Dylan Flaherty 04:10, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, you appear to be making two distinct leaps in logic: (1) because HBI is a "Christian association," then every CPC affiliate is likewise "Christian" by definition, and (2) "faith-based" is a synonym of "Christian." I don't see any support for either claim.

Here's another problem with your interpretative approach: it would lead to nonsensical results. If "Christian association" means that every CPC affiliate is "Christian," and if "faith-based" CPCs also means that affiliates are "Christian," then why use both terms? In other words, if you're right, then for HBI to describe itself as a "Christian association of faith-based pregnancy resource centers" would be utterly circular and redundant. Obviously, the terms have different meanings that can't simply be ignored. Cloonmore (talk) 18:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Now that you mentioned it, I tried to re-analyze that sentence with "Christian" and "faith-based" meaning different things, and...unsurprisingly, it doesn't change anything. Because if you detach "faith-based" from "Christian," all it does is go and attach itself to the other quote we have about HBI, which is that its stuff is "consistent with Biblical principles."

To hopefully explain in a clearer way, we can have one of these two interpretations:

1. "Christian" and "faith-based" are in reference to the centers' perception of their mission, while "consistent with Biblical principles" is in reference to the content of their counseling and handouts.

2. "Christian" is in reference to the centers' perception of their mission, while "faith-based" and "consistent with Biblical principles" are in reference to the content of their counseling and handouts.

Sooooo...not really supporting your point there, Cloonmore.

I'll ask again: If you're going to claim that "faith-based" precludes "Christian," which faith are you talking about? And since "Bible" is the word for the holy text of Judaism and Christianity, and words mean things, where are all these Jewish CPCs you're alluding to? Roscelese (talk) 23:10, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think folks are saying that faith-based precludes Christianity. - Schrandit (talk) 04:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes

There have been a number of changes made recently, without discussion and in conflict with consensus. I am looking at them to see what parts can be salvaged. Unfortunately, if none of the changes have good elements that can be preserved, we will wind up making a "cold revert". Dylan Flaherty 04:45, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The removal of the statement about false medical information is completely unacceptable. It's cited to eleven independent sources, and if by some bizarre magic Schrandit and Cloonmore manage to discredit all of them, there are more. This rubbish about not trusting NARAL cannot and must not be used as an excuse to remove citations from well-established newspapers and magazines. Roscelese (talk) 04:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I share your concern. I'm equally concerned that they appear to be verging on edit war. I would hate to have this spiral out of control until the page was Protected or editors are blocked. However, it's clear that the article has degenerated badly in the last few hours and needs to be restored. So, really, I can't think of anything but to explain why these changes are so terrible and restore to the last good version sometime tomorrow. If you have a better idea, I'm all ears. Dylan Flaherty 05:03, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm with you. It's more than clear by this point not only that the sources support the description of the centers as "Christian," but also that the people arguing against that usage have no sources and no arguments to back them up - and, of course, the reckless removal of information has no grounding in anything. Roscelese (talk) 05:07, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the complex system of rules and interpretations here, but then I remember WP:IAR and just apply common sense. In both of the disputed topics, the evidence is entirely one-sided.

There's not a single reason to believe that CPC's typically give accurate information about abortion risks. I visited the site for Option Line, a joint venture of Heartbeat International and Care Net, and was immediately greeted by errors so glaring that even an informed layman such as myself can easily pick them out! And it's not like this is my personal observation alone; we cited 11 reliable sources and could easily find more.

Likewise, there's just no question at all that CPC's are overwhelmingly Christian. The largest organizations, which account for three quarters of CPC's, are explicitly Christian, one of them going so far as to demand statements of faith, as if this were the faculty of a a religious school. A random sampling of CPC's turns up more references to Jesus than I get at a typical Sunday sermon, and all of our sources insist that the non-Christian ones are rare exceptions. No evidence has been presented to refute this.

The facts are not in doubt and there is no policy which insists that we report falsehoods, so there is, quite literally, nothing left to discuss. It's a very simple situation. What's complex is avoiding an edit war. I've done my part by trying to talk instead of edit the article, but all this has done so far is emboldened changes that are hard to distinguish from vandalism. At this rate, it's going to end with a cold revert, but that could easily spark a war. If so, it would be unfortunate, but I'm only willing to take responsibility for my own actions, not for unreasonable reactions. Dylan Flaherty 05:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, important point: Not all of the 11 sources are "studies," some are independent investigators or journalists. I recommend substituting "investigations" for "studies" or using some other wording that indicates that the sources aren't survey-style and don't necessarily have a large sample size. Roscelese (talk) 08:14, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Henry Waxman IS NOT a independent investigator. By all means, please do include this information but say where it comes from. Also, not sure why it should go in the lead, though that is a minor point. - Schrandit (talk) 11:01, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

At this point, the entire sentence, complete with 11 citations, has been removed entirely, and there have been other equally destructive changes. I'm trying very hard to avoid an edit war, so I'm personally asking you to revert to the last consensus version so that we can move forward from there. Please do this so that we can avoid unnecessary conflict. Dylan Flaherty 18:03, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd kindly remind you, Roscelese, to assume good faith, which you appear to have abandoned in this thread. Dylan Flaherty, your conduct is particularly troubling. You raised the edit in question with me yesterday directly on my Talk page, and we continued the discussion on your Talk page. I told you plainly that if you wanted to restore the original sentence that you had removed without discussion to the body of the article pending further discussion, then I would have no objection. You ignored that invitation, and instead came here wringing your hands about other editors, claiming that you're worried about things spiraling out of control and trying to avoid an edit war. Looks like just the opposite from my vantage point. Cloonmore (talk) 18:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

At this point, Cloonmore, since the choice is between assuming a) that you just haven't read the article and b) that you've read it and you're making these changes out of malice rather than ignorance, I think to assume the former is to assume good faith. Roscelese (talk) 23:10, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't, because I can't imagine removing a sentence with 11 citations and absolutely no refutation. We are clearly very, very different people. Dylan Flaherty 18:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Weren't most/all of those sources already covered in the body of the article? - Schrandit (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes, because if you just remove a statement completely, even if it's cited to eleven separate sources, it totally doesn't make a difference as long as some of the articles are still cited in support of unrelated statements. Roscelese (talk) 23:11, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

A point of order: WP:AGF is not a suicide pact. If an editor has shown his or her hand in terms of POV changes to an article, assuming good faith is out the door. Staying civil is, of course, the right thing to do, but after long periods of wrangling over wording, "in the presence of contrary evidence", there is no such thing as good faith assumptions about motives. Binksternet (talk) 23:32, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In the end, this is not a forum. The only purpose of our discussion is to get some consensus on what the article should contain. In this, we should be guided by key rules and the content of our sources, without attempting to achieve the full support of all participants. Dylan Flaherty 02:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It is, and not to be particularly curt, but I'll remind you that there does not exist a consensus to implement the changes you suggest with regard to the wording of CPC's interaction with religious groups. - Schrandit (talk) 04:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

There is no consensus for or against the changes Dylan made. There is similarly no consensus for keeping the article the way it was before Dylan's changes, yet here you use the concept of "no consensus" to return the article to an unsatisfactory condition, one that has no consensus. It appears that you are using the concept of consensus as a tool to put your preferred version into the article. Binksternet (talk) 16:19, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

If you read above there are two in favor of only characterizing CPCs as Christian and three in favor of keeping the longer explanation of the relationship, though I suppose I should have separated that from the rest of the edit. - Schrandit (talk) 18:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Didn't I already link WP:WHATISCONSENSUS? A bare majority vote won't cut it if one side is all "here are ten sources that say they're Christian" and the other is "but, but, I don't want you to say they're Christian. :(" Roscelese (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That isn't even remotely close to what I said. - Schrandit (talk) 12:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Archiving

I don't think this will be particularly controversial, but ought I to set up an archive bot on this page? It's grown quite long in the past couple of weeks, and since the earliest discussions on the page are over two years old, it might be worth archiving. The how-to page says to build consensus before running an archive bot, so here I am. (What should the auto-archive time be? By year? By month?) Roscelese (talk) 05:21, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead. What I usually see is by month, for sections that haven't been edited in a few weeks. Dylan Flaherty 05:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Third-party sourcing

I'm not comfortable with too much synthesis and interpretation, and it's led to nothing but conflict, so I've looked for third-party documents that speak on the Christian nature of CPC's. I've found it one that I think is quite useful. Feel free to read it, but I've taken the liberty of summarizing some key points:

• "Currently, there are an estimated 2,300 to 3,500 CPCs currently operating in the US, while there are only 1,800 abortion clinics."

• Birthright has the smallest number of affiliated centers, about 400. It is not explicitly Christian and even says it doesn't evangelize. (However, it also says some other things which we know to be false, so I'm reporting this without necessarily endorsing it.)

• Care Net has 972 affiliates and is explicitly Christian.

• Heartbeat International has 880 affiliates and is explicitly Christian.

• NIFLA claims 3000 affiliates and is explicitly Christian. (Note that the number of affiliates seems artificially high, even if we allow overlap.)

No matter how you add it up, CPC's are overwhelmingly Christian. This is taken for granted by others, and we should do the same.

Let's acknowledge this and move on, instead of beating a dead horse. Dylan Flaherty 18:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

These relationships are acknowledged, in the lead no less. - Schrandit (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Small lead

One of the things John Carter pointed out is that our lead is too small. In fact, moving things around so that they're in logical order and less repetitive has only made this worse. I propose that we move most of the lines from the "CPC services" section up to the lead, leaving the two subsections in place with a few sentences as heading. Dylan Flaherty 02:23, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree about expanding the lead, but CPCs services is a pretty big section. Lets cherry-pick the most relevant bits. Maybe a sentence about what medical services (other than counseling) are provided, maybe a sentence about their interactions (both positive and negative) with various American governments. - Schrandit (talk) 04:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

NIFLA size

We currently list Care Net, Heartbeat International and Birthright as the largest affiliations, accounting for about 2200 CPC's out of some 2300 to 3500. Given the fact that there are plenty of unaffiliated (though almost always Christian) CPC's, these numbers make some sense. Then comes NIFLA, claiming 3000 affiliates! What are we to make of this?

One thought is that NIFLA, though run by a former President of Care Net, downplays religion while coming across more like a business. They sell a service, as part of affiliation, to confirm legal compliance so that CPC's don't get sued. They sell another service to upgrade to medical clinic status so that they can perform sonograms, and they sell training for nurses to do the actual work. Could it be that most NIFLA customers are simultaneously affiliated with one the big three? If so, how do we report NIFLA's size in the article? Dylan Flaherty 02:55, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to guess that the source that says there are 3,000 is just wrong. NIFLA's site says there are 1,200. Roscelese (talk) 04:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Good catch. I think I found where the error came from, too.

Ok, 1200 is possible, more or less. It would mean there are about 3400 CPC's affiliated with these four groups. If so, then either there aren't many unaffiliated centers or the 3500 estimate for the total is too conservative. Either way, it gives NIFLA a place in the lead.

As for the issue of medical services, which Schrandit raised above, the same link says that about 700 offer ultrasound, which would be roughly a fifth of affiliated centers. Other than that, most CPC's will give over-the-counter pregnancy tests, though only under controlled circumstances (which has led to complaints). They're generally not clinics, they don't have doctors and they rarely even have RN's. The one Even if they have ultrasound, it's primarily used for non-medical purposes. In short, we can't pretend that these centers are an alternative to a full-service gynecological clinic, even if we put aside the issue of abortion.

The one I supported was quite frank, simply calling itself a counseling center, without any pretension of medical services. (Granted, one of the concerns was that they'd have to provide condoms if they claimed to be a clinic.) Dylan Flaherty 05:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That might be a worthwhile distinction, to say that CPCs usually provide some medical services but usually don't have medical personnel on site. - Schrandit (talk) 08:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That sounds great, but how much can we actually say while sticking to our sources? Some CPCs have real doctors and (registered) nurses, but those are by far the exception. Even then, they generally stick to working the ultrasound rather than providing comprehensive services.

In general, the only services provided are counseling and OTC pregnancy tests. At risk of oversimplifying, how much can be said about telling a young woman that Jesus wants her to keep the baby, showing her a video tape of aborted fetuses and handing her a plastic stick to pee on? This isn't exactly the Mayo Clinic. :-)

We need to go with what the reliable sources tell us. If we can find something that shows my summary is inaccurate, then let's go with that. Dylan Flaherty 09:40, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, so currently the article makes a few different statements about which is the largest CPC. From the numbers, it looks like it's NIFLA ("approximately 1,200" to Care Net's "more than 1,100"), but Care Net states that it is the largest. (In the USA, that is - Heartbeat is apparently the largest in the world.) What do we do? Most third-party sources don't even mention NIFLA. Roscelese (talk) 05:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, the one I dug up earlier does mention NIFLA, but it quotes a broken link for the 3000 figure. I now suspect that the 1200/3000 error was made by GuideStar and copied by LegalMomentum, though I can't be sure. The closest thing we have to an article on NIFLA is Thomas Glessner, which describes it as a public interest law firm. Maybe CPC's are simultaneously in one of the big three affiliate networks and are clients of NIFLA. Without a list of members from each group, it's hard to confirm this, though.

I've done my best to include some mention of NIFLA without committing to hard numbers that quickly go obsolete, but like you, I would prefer more certainty about the figures. Any ideas? Dylan Flaherty 09:40, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

BRD

I'd like to go over the recent bold changes, one at a time, to make sure there are no misunderstandings, and to head off any possible edit war:

1. "with few exceptions" - We only know of 50 for sure. There are probably more, but all the data we have says they're few and exceptional.
2. "However, investigations by congressional staffers, journalists, and pro-choice organizations have consistently found" - This is exactly what our sources say. This is not a case of "Pro-choice advocates have argued", since the sources vary from pro-choice to disinterested, and these are not arguments but investigations and studies. And, to be frank, we know it's true because we can check for ourselves, as I mentioned earlier. If you know the difference between a uterus and an ovary, it's hard not to laugh out loud when reading that FAQ!
3. "are not medical clinics" - This is completely accurate; CPC's that are medical clinics are outnumbered 4:1 by those that aren't. And even the clinics are very much limited in their services.
4. "The overwhelming majority of CPCs in the US are Christian ministries which" - I believe that anything over 75% would count as an overwhelming majority, and our figures are in the 90+% range. The term "ministry" is comes straight from the directory; no OR needed.
5. "many require their employees" - Care Net does and it accounts for about a thousand centers. As a raw number, this qualifies as "many". Given that our highest estimate of the total number of CPC's is under 4000, I believe that over 25% also counts as "many".
6. "unwanted religious evangelizing" - Agreed that "religious" is redundant here.
7. "Centers for Disease Control, the Texas Attorney General" - No reason was given for removing these two. Do we need even more citations that we already have?

If anyone has counter-arguments, I suggest that we discuss them here and build a consensus. In the meantime, most of the changes will be reverted, as they were never properly justified. Dylan Flaherty 09:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

This is complete bullocks.

1 - We're quoting a source, why would we deviate when quoting?

2 - Again, the bullocks - Henry Waxman is Henry F'ing Waxman, The source for the Austin article is the Waxman source and NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, The first NYT source is an opinion piece from 1987, the second NYT source (also from 1987) complains about false advertising, but not false medical advise, the Star-Telegram uses and anonymous woman and the head of the National Abortion Federation, the Star-Telegram does give a pretty solid indictment of a CPC in Toronto (but just a CPC in Toronto), I shouldn't have to go in about NARAL, the TIME article merely quotes the concerns of pro-choice activists, Savanah quotes pro-choice concerns.

These are not "investigations by congressional staffers, journalists, and pro-choice organizations" consistently coming to a conclusion - this a rambling amalgamation of 23 years of reliable sources quoting pro-choice advocates.

3 - They're not lots of things. The definitions of "medical clinic" and "medical services" are unfixed. Maybe "The majority of CPCs are not medical clinics though most offer some medical services"?

4 - I've got a 3-2 consensus to keep the current wording. Unless something has shifted about that I don't see any reason to continue to hash this over again.

5 - This is America, you can't fire an employee based on religion. Those people are not employed by Care net The sources listed are asking volunteers to be Christian and frankly I'm surprised that they haven't been sued.

6 - Cool.

7 - Utter bullocks. The source comes no where close saying that. - Schrandit (talk) 11:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm certain we can have a civil discussion about this without strong language, or even euphemisms for such language.

1) I agree that we should not deviate from a source when quoting, but I don't see why we should quote that source when we have multiple sources that (quite literally) add up to a simpler and more accurate phrase. The original quote came from a reporter who was being unnecessarily careful; we have enough hard numbers that we can speak more directly.

2) You are generalizing about 11 13 sources, but these generalizations do not hold up to even cursory scrutiny. Let's go over them briefly:

i) House of Representatives Report.

ii) Jordan Smith for the Austin Chronicle, in a story explicitly labeled news, not opinion.

iii) New York Times editorial which cites public records of court cases in three states. Or are those just matters of opinion?

iv) Jane Gross writing for the NYT in a piece that is NY/Region, not opinion.

v) Stephanie Simon for the Los Angeles Times; again, not an opinion piece.

vi)Jan Jarvis for the Star-Telegram; not an opinion piece.

vii) Joanna Smith for the Star; not an opinion piece.

viii) NARAL, a reliable but not neutral source. There are 35 citations for 20 pages, so it's not fluff.

ix) Nancy Gibbs for Time; not an opinion piece.

x) Beth Goers for Savannah Connect; not an opinion piece.

xi) Star News investigation; not an opinion piece.

xii) Hunter Stuart for RH Reality Check, not a neutral source, but unsure of how reliable.

xiii) NARAL again, still reliable, still not neutral. This time, 30 citations for 7 pages.

Now, even if we (incorrectly) ignore i, iii, viii, xii, and xiii, we still have 8 reliable sources, where 1 would suffice. Also, see below about common sense.

3) I'm using their own terms, in proper context. For example, read the second bullet point here. The reason they're helping centers get licensed is that you need a license to be a medical clinic. This means that it's a legal term whose definition is spelled out. If you wish to claim that the term is somehow ambiguous, please show me your reliable source, otherwise this is a closed issue.

4) Consensus is about following the rules, not counting votes, and it changes as our sources do. The wording I used is fully consistent with the sources we have now. If you have an actual argument against it, I am always willing to listen, but your disapproval alone is not sufficient. If anything, my recent experiences on TPM have shown that even a small minority can win out if it has the rules and sources behind it.

5) I'm not sure where you're getting this from: you absolutely can require religious beliefs from employees. For example, the staff at Catholic schools all sign the standard statement of faith. Even more trivially, Catholic priests who have spoken out against the church have, quite rightly, been defrocked. Again, unless you have some sort of reliable source to back up your statement, there's nowhere to go with this but out.

6) Glad we agree on something.

7) I'm going to play the common sense card now. If it's not enough for you that we have 13 reliable sources, go to http://www.optionline.org/questions/considering-abortion/ and read it. While there are many good reasons not to have an abortion, such as basic morality, the medical information here is simply false. The page goes on and on about risks without bothering to mention that carrying a pregnancy to term is riskier than a first-trimester abortion (for the woman, at least; let's not speak of the unborn child). It also repeats the thoroughly-refuted claims about breast cancer, psychological harm and infertility. Now, I'm about as pro-life as anyone can be, to the point that I've gotten into trouble in my own church for suggesting it would be better if condoms and hormonal contraceptives were used than for women to ever be in a position where they felt compelled to consider abortion, but even I can see that this ranges from intentionally misleading to outright false. Let's cut out the list of investigators or any suggestions about their biases and state the facts on their own. There isn't a single reliable source that contradicts it, and common sense demands it.

Please, this didn't have to become an edit war and it still doesn't. Let's work on this together; the first step is for you to revert your changes for all of the reasons I just stated. Dylan Flaherty 12:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

1 - Legit. I'd be more comfortable with a number (or percentage) than a generalization. Is it realistic to hope for one?

2 - i) A partisan report which should under no circumstances be cited out of context.

ii) A new story indeed, that is commenting on the Waxman report and "Sarah Wheat, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas".

iii) Which speculates on the outcome of future court cases.

iv) Indeed it is not opinion, but its topic is advertising.

v) Sorry, which is the LAT source?

vi) I never said it was an opinion piece, I said it was reiterating the claims of the NAF.

vii) I would be extremely uncomfortable without notifying the reader of the origin of that source.

ix) I never said it was an opinion piece, I said that it just quotes pro-choice activists.

X) The Savannah piece was interesting but its just about one woman saying a CPC was evasive when she asked for an abortion.

xi) Talks a bit about advertising and quotes the NAF.

xii) When in doubt...

I don't see a RS saying "CPCs usually dispense false medical advise" I see a few RSs say "1 CPCs said medically questionable things" followed by a quote from a pro-choice advocate saying "and they're all like that". Most of these RSs seem to be writing about CPCs and go on to quote a pro-choice advocates saying "CPCs usually dispense false medical advise". While it is certainly fair to say that pro-choice advocates claim that most CPCs dispense false medical advise I don't think its fair to write that without that modifier.

Conversely there I think the statement "CPCs often don't advertise themselves as such" would be justified in the lead.

3 - I did a google search (not the best, I know) and I can't find any sort of a definition. When Focus/NIFLA talk about licensing they see to be talking about training to properly use a sonogram.

4 - Our sources describe an affiliation. Why would we move away from our quotable sources toward vague, unanchored generalizations that can be taken out of context?

5.1 - The sources I saw listed were only looking for volunteers.

5.2 - The Church gets a pass, no one else does.

7 - While that certainly wouldn't qualify as a neutral source it has the bejesus cited out of it. Failing the mention inconvenient facts is a world away from lying. Common sense also dictates that people write stories when a woman finds a finger in her burger at MacDonald's, but not about when a woman has a burger at MacDonald's. CPCs has been around for coming on 40 years, there are thousands around the country, more around the world. A half dozen reports seems statistically insignificant. - Schrandit (talk) 18:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Since at this point Schrandit is blatantly just making stuff up (the Chronicle and Star-Telegram just quote NARAL? The Times article doesn't say anything about false medical information?) I'm not sure why we're still having this conversation. I know you're asking for Schrandit to revert the changes to avoid an edit war, but I think you're unusually optimistic, and I'm reverting them myself in the interest of having the article provide real information instead of fake information. Roscelese (talk) 16:19, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Sarah's experience is not unlike others that have occurred at crisis pregnancy centers around the country, which are largely funded by religious organizations, said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation.

crisis pregnancy centres are offering misleading information to women who are faced with an unplanned pregnancy,” says Agathe Grametz-Kedzior, program manager at Ottawa-based reproductive rights group Canadians for Choice.

Do you even read the things you cite? - Schrandit (talk) 18:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The Star-Telegram reports the experience of someone who is not associated with NAF, in addition to quoting Saporta. The Star conveys the findings of its own reporter. Nice try, but you're going to have to work a little harder than that. Roscelese (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The claim of "13 sources" supporting "consistent" findings against CPCs would be laughable were it not so POV. First and foremost among the sources listed is the partisan Henry Waxman minority committee report. Four others (Austin Chron, SF Gate, WaPo, Time) rely on and regurgitate the Waxman report. Two others are NARAL hit jobs. The two NYT refs (one an Op-Ed) are 23 yrs old and concern the Pearson Foundation, which by all indications is no longer in the CPC business. The Ft. Worth paper recites NAF's biased views, while the Savannah Connect (which is what exactly? a blog?) contains a first-person account of someone (journalist? gadfly?) which falls quite short of finding deceptive practices. The only piece of non-NARAL/NAF, non-Waxman investigative journalism of the whole lot is the Toronto Star, which is of course about Canada exclusively. (I couldn't access the UK Sky News video, which is presumably about the UK.) The sentence is poorly sourced and reflective of significant bias against CPCs. Cloonmore (talk) 17:14, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

You're an independent person, Cloonmore. Just because Schrandit says the newspaper articles regurgitate the Waxman report doesn't mean you have to believe it. Why don't you take a look at the sources for yourself?

Your remarks about the sources are easily disproved simply by reading the articles cited. The Chronicle reports the experience of a caller unaffiliated with Waxman and merely notes the similarity to the report's findings; the SF Gate mentions a CPC that disseminates false information about a cancer risk in a paragraph that happens to follow a paragraph about Waxman, but without even stating that that CPC was one of the ones the report investigated, much less saying that that's where they got the information; the WaPo doesn't mention Waxman even once and reports the experience of someone unaffiliated with the report; and Time mentions Waxman but also quotes a CPC worker defending her decision to give out false information. Likewise, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram - quotes Saporta, but also reports on an unaffiliated visitor who was told that 50 percent of women who have an abortion get breast cancer and 30 percent die within a year of the procedure. Connect Savannah is a weekly paper.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at with contesting the NYT refs because both cite a medically inaccurate slideshow produced by the Pearson Foundation. The CPCs used the slideshow. Just because it was produced by Pearson doesn't mean that the sources don't support the statement that CPCs provide inaccurate information. If you have a source that indicates that most CPCs now repudiate the Pearson approach, by all means, cite it. And yes, they're op-eds; that means that a statement like "Most CPCs do this" must be attributed. It doesn't mean that we must assume that their report of specific, named people is made up out of thin air.

So yeah, "the sentence is poorly sourced"? Nope. "Reflective of significant bias against CPCs?" Only if you think anything short of a puff piece for CPCs is biased against them. Roscelese (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, all you have done here is mock and demean other editors. I see no point in continuing to talk with you. - Schrandit (talk) 12:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Before you say that, please read WP:SILENT. Dylan Flaherty 13:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, I'm really unhappy about this. While I've run into editors who seem impossible to work with, Schrandit is not one of them. We were involved in a dispute on another abortion-related article recently, where we didn't completely agree on what to do about a gallery of protest photos but somehow managed to reach a compromise that we were all happy with. I'm sure we could resolve this one, too.

I can't deny that it's not looking good. Looking at the discussion above, it seems clear that neither Schrandit nor Cloonmore have put up responses that are ultimately persuasive or credible. Instead, they are repeating points that have already been resolved while simply ignoring points they cannot refute, which I believe counts as tendentious. Consider that there has been no response to the common sense argument about just reading the FAQ full of obviously false medical claims. I really don't see much point in discussing these matters further, as they've been discussed to death and fully resolved.

I'm going to give the two a bit more time, in hopes that we can avoid an edit war. If they dig in their heals, I'm going to edit the article as the rules and sources dictate, and if they launch a war over it, then I'm prepared to report it and probably get the article Protected for weeks. It sucks, but I don't see any alternative. Dylan Flaherty 21:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The relationship with Christian organizations is a complex issue. Lets put that aside until after we have dealt with the rest. 1 - The contested sentence in the lead.

1.1 - Does this really even belong in the lead?

1.2 - Get rid of Waxman, Waxman's criticism is out of place there and is covered extensively in the rest of the article.

1.3 - The word "consistently" bothers me a lot. A half dozen incidents over 40 years and thousands of CPCs. (more, and longer if you want to talk about traditional maternaty homes) I'd like to see the sentence cut down to the sources that are reporting on their experiences with CPCs (rather than quoting NARAL, which while important is not journalistic inquiry) and read something like "Journalists have found that some CPCs have disseminated false medical information about the health risks of abortion".

2 - Medical clinics - Again, these terms don't have fixed meanings and putting them back to back doesn't make much sense. Is there wording that would make it clear to the reader that though CPCs provide medical counseling and some medical services they are not hospitals? 3 - Requiring employees to be Christian. - I still haven't seen a source that says that. - Schrandit (talk) 12:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it's really not complex at all: CPCs are Christian.

1.1. - Absolutely. The lead must not conceal this obvious fact, as that would be a gross violation of WP:NPOV.

1.2. - I'm sorry, but Waxman is a perfectly good source, regardless of whether we agree with him on this matter or share his political views. The fact that we have a couple of sources that claim to refute his report is actually a good thing because it means we have something to balance it with.

1.3 - Consistently, in that no vaguely credible study has ever come back with a different conclusion. Again, this is not a surprise, as any study today would run into Care Net and we all know Care Net is guilty in this regard.

2 - No, we have sources showing that it's a well-defined legal term. NIFLA's lawyers will, for a price, help you get your CPC certified as a clinic, primarily so that you can provide ultrasound. We have no sources to suggest that the counseling that CPC's provide is medical, and 13 sources saying otherwise.

3 - Even without direct confirmation that Care Net's statement of faith requirement applies to its employees as well as its volunteers, we already know that Catholic CPC's require such a statement, just as Catholic schools do.

Lets move on now. Dylan Flaherty 13:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - I'm not trying to conceal anything but not every section needs to go in a lead. The article for Planned parenthood, for instance, contains a healthy, well-sourced criticism section but doesn't mention it in the lead.

1.2 - Waxman is a perfectly good source but he should not be confused for a journalist. We rightly use him as a source throughout the article but he doesn't belong in with that lot.

1.3 - No vaguely credible study has ever come back with that conclusion either. We are dealing with report of a half dozen CPCs out of thousands operating over 40 years.

2 - It is possible, and its not a huge deal but I'd really like to see it in writing rather than trying to guess. A cursorry google search didn't turn anything up.

3 - Care Net doesn't employ those folks. It would be accurate to say that grants and support are conditional on religious faith, but not employment. - Schrandit (talk) 20:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest anything about your motives. I was talking from the perspective of the article structure, where we're encouraged to put more information in the lead and to avoid placing criticism in its own section. This isn't even a matter of criticism so much as getting the basic facts across earlier rather than later; in the lead instead of in the very next section. I'm still unsure of precisely what your objection is.

1.2 - I don't believe we ever call him a journalist, and I don't think we should even try to summarize who the 13 sources are. It's a general enough finding that attribution is pointless.

1.3 - There are 13 cited reasons why that's not the case. There's also the simple fact that the Options Line, run by Care Net and HBI, has blatantly misleading medical information up right this moment. This is not something worth discussing at any more length.

2 - NIFLA calls itself "the national leader in the development of legal guidelines to help PRCs convert to licensed medical clinics", and its FAQ says, "A center must be a licensed medical clinic under the laws of the state in which it operates. Unless dictated otherwise by state statutory regulations, a “medical clinic” is defined as a facility which provides medical services under the supervision and direction of a licensed physician.". I think that's clear enough without guessing, and we know that the majority of CPC's do not qualify. Let's use the reference, too.

3 - We also know that Catholic CPC's do have a religious requirement for employees. That's enough right there.

I've been very patient answering your questions, and I've held off on fixing the article in the meantime as a show of good faith, but at this point I don't see anything here that would be a compelling argument. Without doubting your intentions for even a moment, I have to ask you to just let go of this, as the rules and sources do not support these suggestions. I hope you'll remain part of the collaborative editing process regardless and help us make this article better. Based on our previous interaction, I'm confident that we can find a way to work together here. Dylan Flaherty 21:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - Its disproportional. The lead is 3 1/2 lines lone and a full line is devoted to criticism. Either fill out the lead to put it in context or take it out.

1.2 - He is currently described as an "investigator", that's bunk.

1.3 - I appreciate the move to "routinely".

2 - Legit. How would you folks feel if I changed that sentence to "The majority of CPCs are not medical clinics and do not offer a full array medical services". To convey to the reader that most CPCs do offer some medical services.

3 - It is unclear if Catholic CPCs operate under those standards (I spent some time at a Catholic school as well and a bunch of my teachers were Jews) and if they do I don't think the small number of Catholic CPCs (50 out of 3,000?) adds up to "many".

4 - As a minor point, does anyone mind if I removed the Maloney source from the Criticism section? It has nothing to do with the text there. - Schrandit (talk) 12:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - Without that sentence, we can't even mention that CPC's provide information about abortion, due to WP:NPOV. In the end, it's just one sentence, with citations that are nearly as long as the words themselves, and as I've pointed out, this isn't just some random criticism, it's a basic fact. I think the right answer here is, as Carter suggested, to enlarge the lead. Then this sentence won't stick out at all.

1.2 - I believe his report qualifies as a congressional investigation, which makes him an investigator. I realize that "investigator" may conjure up visions of Magnum, P.I., but that's not the only sort of professional investigation out there. Ask any accountant and prepare for a lecture on auditing. :-)

1.3 - I think it's quite clear that we both want this article to be fair and accurate. I know it hasn't always been easy to find a compromise, but I assure you that it's worth the effort.

2 - Do they? Beyond "pee on this", which amounts to redistributing an OTC product, it's not clear that the majority provide any medical services. The counseling is the primary service, and our sources say that it is typically religious counseling -- ministering -- which is routinely in violation of medical norms. Consider that, at the bare minimum, every CPC affiliated with Care Net and HBI is an example of this. Even the fairly small minority of CPCs that gain medical clinic status so they can have ultrasound aren't performing these for the same reasons that a gynecologist would, or under the same standards. NIFLA, for example, offers training courses in Limited Obstetrical Ultrasound for nurse practitioners.

3 - Ironically, the Care Net statement of faith is, at face value, incompatible with Catholicism, so they had to make special provisions. As you may well be aware, Catholics are all too often singled out in statements of faith by Protestant institutions who do not wish to accommodate them. As for Catholic schools with non-Catholic teachers, I'm not entirely sure about how that works. If you look at a typical employment application, it certainly reads as though it requires Catholicism. You've aroused my curiosity on the matter, so I'm going to look into it further, even though at this point it has little to do with the article.

In any case, even if Catholic CPC's make provisions for Jews by holding them to a more appropriate standard, that doesn't suggest they'd accommodate atheists, agnostics or even deists. In other words, they would still want a statement of faith, even if it's a different faith. I also suspect that they would not be happy about a Jewish volunteer telling young women that Jesus is not the Messiah.

As for Catholic CPC's, there are hundreds of them. The "50" in the article refers to nonsectarian CPCs funded by the federal government.

4 - It's there to support the mention of the ACLU.

I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to dissolve the criticism section and merge its content into the rest of the article. Dylan Flaherty 14:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - I'll try to work on filling out the lead, cause right now a third of it more or less reads "many people think these people are liars".

1.2 - To me, and I'm assuming to others, investigator spurs an image of impartial fact-seeking. The 14 sources listed there right now looks very strange and many of them don't entirely verify the text cited. Would y'all mind if I trim those down to the neutral sources that did investigate the matter (principle the Star-Telegram, Thestar and Contact Savannah)?

2 - Counseling is what most planned parenthood's provide and it is part of their business model. Quick google searches turn up hundreds (probably thousands, I didn't look that long) of CPCs providing prenatal care, STD testing, maternal care and breast cancer screening. What is critically more important, a cursory examination of our source doesn't turn up verification of that sentence.

3 - Do we have anything at the moment that says the Catholic CPCs require their employees to be Christian? Right now our sources just link to protestant affiliated CPCs to ask their volunteers to be Christian.

4 - OK, I thought the NYT source addressed the ACLU but I now see that it does not.

At present I don't see anything that could not reasonably find a home in the "Legal and legislative action in response to CPCs" section. All of the sources are overlapping. - Schrandit (talk) 12:29, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - No, no, no, it's not that they're liars, just misinformed! Once a center gets hooked up with an outfit like Care Net or HBI, they rely on it for training their volunteers and for providing those pamphlets. In my experience, the volunteers are often earnest older women who absolutely believe every word they're saying and genuinely want to help the walk-ins (their term, not mine). They're just good people and there is, on their part, no intent to deceive. Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent them from repeating medically inaccurate claims. It's a systemic problem.

We have two ways of filling out the lead. One is to find lines that are already broad summaries, such as in section headings, and move them up. Another is to summarize existing section content. Let's look at both options, although it might be better to discuss them before making changes, just to keep the edit history clean.

1.2 - Ken Starr investigated Clinton's affair, but he was by no means impartial. It didn't matter: the evidence was impartial, so Clinton was impeached. I'm sure some of the people investigating CPCs were hoping to find problems, but the problems they found are entirely real, as you've seen for yourself.

If there's a source that has nothing to do with the sentence, bring it up here and we'll see if it needs removing. Otherwise, I don't think we should mess with it.

2 - The counseling at Planned Parenthood is medical, but then again, it's not the same sort of counseling that's available at a CPC, which is categorized as "lay or peer". All the data we have suggests CPC's providing any medical services are a small minority. The application for Care Net clearly distinguishes both pregnancy tests and (lay or peer) counseling from medical services such as STD testing, prenatal medical care, ultrasound or comprehensive health.

I know there are some Catholic-run comprehensive health clinics that, for obvious reasons, will not perform or counsel abortions, but I'm not sure that they're even considered CPCs because they don't target pregnant women and do offer medical counseling from doctors, registered nurses and social workers. Still, that's something to look into.

In any case, if we have reliable sources that give different numbers, we can change the wording to match. However, even when there are medical services, and even if it's legally a clinic, we have to be careful not to create a false impression about what's going on: CPC's are primarily about preventing abortions, not providing medical care.

On a related note, I found an interesting article (on a site that's full of them!) about the licensing required to perform laboratory pregnancy tests in a non-clinic setting. Here's the part that stuck in my head:

"When we were sending the tests to an outside lab, the client would go home and await the results. After we started doing the tests in-house, we realized that we were able to counsel the client as she waited for the results. We also found it advantageous to know the test results before the client did. I encourage other centers to get their CLIA waivers so their volunteers can do the tests."

Keep in mind that, unlike the old days back when I was growing up (and we all lived in caves and lacked even Basic Cable), OTC tests for pregnancy are now just as sensitive and accurate as those in the lab.

3 - Well, we can see from that Care Net application that they want to know the church denomination of all board members and require that the center "not engage the services of any board member, director or volunteer who does not concur with the Care Net Statement of Faith". It also asks whether the directory is salaried or waged. I think that's enough right there, and that's without even discussing the interesting Catholic issues you brought up.

Incidentally, there's a section asking about other affiliations, with check boxes for HBI and NIFLA, as well as a write-in. I believe this confirms that centers may have multiple affiliations simultaneously, so we can't just add the numbers for each together to get a total.

I have to tell you, I've found that editing this article has been very educational. Dylan Flaherty 16:27, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - I'll try working on the second option.

1.2 - I don't think anyone would merely paint Ken Starr as an "investigator" and leave it at that. If waxman stays he ought be labeled as a "Congressional Democrat" or something to that extent.

2 - Planned parenthood counseling is "mostly" medical. (and yes, I do have the citations to back that up) and is almost never given by a doctor.

One third of all the hospitals in the United States are run by the Catholic Church and none of them perform abortions or provide referrals for abortions (this was buckets of fun during the socialized medicine debate). I would assume that some number of Protestant and Jewish hospitals operate under the same policy.

You may scoff at the quality and comprehensiveness of CPC counseling but they do provide it, I haven't come across any that don't offer pregnancy testing and all the ones that I've seen offer STD screening. These constitute medical services. It is worthwhile to note that the medical services provided by most CPCs are of a limited nature. It is false to state that most CPCs offer no medical services.

2.1 - We have sources that say many CPCs look like planned parenthoods, I don't think we have any that say they look like hospitals.

3 - The Care Net application is for a grant, those folks do not work for Care Net. It is accurate to say that Care Net requires grant applicants to adhere to their statement of faith, it is categorically false to say that their employment was a condition of their faith. And again, the current sources that we have ask volunteer to be Christians.

No doubt on the education bit. - Schrandit (talk) 13:18, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

1.1 - Sure, but be careful. One thing I learned recently is that controversial topics are very hard to summarize without losing neutrality. The full version includes all the facts and lets them speak for themselves, but a summary requires us to pick, choose and evaluate, and that's where bias (real or perceived) sneaks in.

1.2 - Party affiliation would make more sense if there weren't such a thing as Democrats for Life. Regardless, there's no space for such detail; with so many sources, it's best to speak of "investigations", which is neutral and accurate, instead of trying to parse out the details of each investigator. That's what links are for.

2 - Right, but we were talking specifically about clinics. PP clinics have social workers and RN's providing medical counseling, under the supervision of doctors who are physically in the building. We know that the overwhelming majority of CPCs are not clinics and do not have a doctor available, and that what they provide is non-medical counseling (politely referred to as lay or peer to avoid saying amateur). There's no point debating quality or comprehensiveness, because these are two entirely different types of counseling: medical and non-medical.

In any case, I haven't run across any information suggesting that Catholic hospitals or clinics routinely lie about medical facts, whereas CPCs, whether Catholic or otherwise, do have this earned reputation. Clearly, there's something about the institution of the CPC that encourages this sort of thing. In fact, at the risk of WP:OR, I am beginning to suspect that we already have some clue: organizations such as Care Net and NIFLA aren't just directories for existing CPCs, they're the providers of training and materials to volunteers.

You're right about pregnancy testing, although this often amounts to "pee on this" or "pee into this and we'll mail it off".

You're not right about STD testing, though. Diagnosing such diseases normally requires drawing blood or performing a pelvic exam, and there are no CLIA waivers for that. Instead, what non-clinics do is provide a referral to center-friendly, pro-choice doctor, often an OB/GYN who would be glad to be there at delivery time. Still, making a phone call for someone is not a medical service, it's a small favor.

Our sources are very clear on this: the overwhelming majority are not clinics and cannot legally offer medical services. If you have some reliable sources that challenge this, you'll need to present them. Until then, I believe this subject is closed.

3 - I am at a loss as to how to explain your misreading of this document; it says nothing like what you suggest. It is clearly labeled "Affiliation Application", and there is nothing in there that speaks of grants. If anything, item 4 specifies that the CPC pays a fee to Care Net in return for affiliation benefits, while item 6 agrees to the pay the expenses of an inspector who will train the board members. The one that matters most is item 3, which says that the board members and director, as well as volunteers, must accept the Care Net statement of faith. We also see from the application that directors may be salaried or waged, with the CPC paying them. This could not be more clear. I have no doubt that you will agree once you take the time to read this more carefully.

In the meantime, I will look over the changes you've made. From the quick glance I took, I suspect that Roscelese would likely revert the whole thing, and that he would not be entirely wrong for doing so. I'm going to make an attempt at salvaging what I can, although I cannot make any promises. Dylan Flaherty 15:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I promised I'd explain why I kept some changes and not others. Here's a brief list:

a) Kept the information about numbers and funding in the lead but cut details about medical misinformation for now, as that's being worked on.

b) An abortion clinic look like any other medical clinic, so we can't say this.

c) The legal term is "clinic", so we can't change it to "medical facility".

d) As explained, these services are not medical. See the CN application for details.

e) The part about on-site lab testing is misleading, as CLIA waivers provide this without clinic status and are much easier to obtain.

f) The phrase "post-abortion counseling" is self-explanatory. The claim about wishing to prevent further abortions by the same women is plausible but unsupported. If we can find a RS, we can keep it.

g) Dropped second attempt at UNDUE "reversal", already explained below.

h) Dropped pick-and-choose shortening of "abortion service" to abortion. Better to stick to our sources and remain consistent. Also, services includes more than just abortions.

i) Removed redundancy in Global Prevalence section, changing it to Affiliation.

Hope that helps. Dylan Flaherty 15:35, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2 - Fair enough, "pro-choice congressman" will suffice.

Per the sources, Austin Chronicle, NTY Opinion, SFGate, and Time do not verify the stated text, NARAL, Educators for Choice and RHrealitycheck should have never been used to begin with. This leaves more than enough sources but it is time to separate the wheat from the chaff.

2 - The majority of palanned parenthoods do not have a doctor on staff nor do the majority of their staff have any particular medical training. Our souces are by no means clear on the last point.

3 - This last point boils down to a single question. Are those people employed by Care Net? - Schrandit (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

b. - No, we cannot. They don't and that is not what CPCs are being accused of. None of our sources say that CPCs are being mistaken for dentists' offices, that they go to lengths to look like phistical therepy centers or so on. Our sources only show that CPCs look like abortion linics.

c. - I have to challenge you on this point. Laws are exceedingly public things, it shouldn't take more than a minute to find. Show me the law.

f. - That is the quintiseltial ironic reversal, that criticism belongs in the criticism section.

h. - Are there abortion services other than abortion? - Schrandit (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Per the sources, Austin Chronicle, NTY Opinion, SFGate, and Time do not verify the stated text - You know, pretending you can't read really isn't cute at your age. Do you need me to quote the Chronicle, NYT, Gate, and Time for you? Roscelese (talk) 00:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it is true that when discussing sources, we need direct quotes. Here is my attempt at it:

Statement that the refs support:

However, investigations have routinely found that CPCs disseminate false medical information about the alleged health risks of abortion.

References:

• "Waxman": http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/documents/20060717101140-30092.pdf

• quote: "During the investigation, 20 of the 23 centers (87%) provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion."
• does the ref support the statement? Yes
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Keep

• "austin": http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A392308

• quote: "Unfortunately, none of the information is medically accurate."
• does the ref support the statement? Yes
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Keep

• "lie": http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/21/opinion/the-right-to-lie.html

• does the ref support the statement? No. The ref mentions mentions deceptive trade practices, but not false medical information.
• is the ref a reliable source? No. It occurs in the opinion section of NYT.
• my overall vote: Delete

• "gross": http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6D91138F930A15752C0A961948260

• does the ref support the statement? No. The ref mentions mentions deceptive advertising, but not false medical information.
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Delete one use

• "gross": http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6D91138F930A15752C0A961948260

• does the ref support the statement? No. The ref mentions mentions deceptive advertising, but not false medical information.
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Delete one use

• "Sonograms": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801967.html

• quote: "Abortion rights activists are calling for tighter regulations. They say the antiabortion centers mislead women about the health effects of abortion."
• does the ref support the statement? No. The quote is reified. The Washington Post is not putting their own neck on the line to support the statement.
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Delete one use

• "statefunding": http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/12/MNGT0O32TB1.DTL&sn=005&sc=155

• quote: "Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, an abortion rights supporter, last year asked undercover investigators to contact 23 crisis pregnancy centers; 20 gave misleading information, such as exaggerating the risk of abortion, he reported."
• does the ref support the statement? No, for two reasons: (1)The quote is reified; (2) it talks about "misleading information" not "misleading health information"
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Delete one use

• "startelegram": http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/09/13/2465545/advertising-practices-of-crisis.html

• does the ref support the statement? No
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Delete one use

• "star": http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/844997

• quote: ""The Star found volunteers and paid staff at the centres were giving out verbal and written information about the physical and psychological risks of terminating a pregnancy – including breast cancer, emotional trauma and infertility – that either lacked context or has been dismissed by medical experts. ... Here are the three main risks that crisis pregnancy centres visited by the Star claim are associated with abortion. Medical experts have largely dismissed them as myths and exaggerations."
• does the ref support the statement? No, for two reasons: (1)The quote is reified to medical experts; (2)One weasel word, "largely"
• is the ref a reliable source? Yes
• my overall vote: Delete one use

• "naralny": http://www.prochoiceny.org/assets/files/cpcreport2010.pdf

• quote: "While the majority of surveyed websites simply encouraged potential clients to come in for an appointment to “get the facts” about the procedure, the CPCs that did mention abortion on their websites provided medically inaccurate information: approximately 13% claimed abortion was linked to breast cancer and future infertility, and 25% warned it could cause “post-abortion syndrome” and other health complications.
• does the ref support the statement? Yes
• is the ref a reliable source? No because self-published
• my overall vote: Delete

• "savannah": http://www.connectsavannah.com/news/archive/10395/

• quote: "The main risks the anti-abortion camp focuses on are breast cancer and post-abortion stress syndrome. (The National Cancer Institute refutes any connection between abortion and breast cancer.) ... (Research studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, American Psychologist and Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, have all concluded that post-abortion syndrome does not exist.)"
• does the ref support the statement? No because the ref does not say directly that anything was inaccurate.
• is the ref a reliable source? No. The bulk of the reference is an opinion piece of a case study: one reporter's experience.
• my overall vote: Delete

• "five": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ecV_qVr4FU

• is the ref a reliable source? No. Video is hosted by YouTube and it does not have Channel Five News chrome around it.
• does the ref support the statement? unknown. Didn't watch.
• my overall vote: Delete. Suggest someone search around the Sky News site to see if there is a video they publish directly.

• "RH Reality Check": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJXRVA16Kig

• suggest change link to http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/video/reality-check-video-series/crisis-pregnancy-centers
• is the ref a reliable source? No. Self-published source.
• does the ref support the statement? unknown. Didn't watch.
• my overall vote: Delete

• "NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland": http://www.prochoicemaryland.org/assets/files/cpcreportfinal.pdf

• quote: "Reports by Congressional committee staff and the National Abortion Federation found that CPCs provide false or misleading health information in the hope of convincing women not to have abortions."
• does the ref support the statement? Yes
• is the ref a reliable source? No. Self-published source.
• my overall vote: Delete

I appreciate the effort, but you appear to have missed a few things.

When Carla Abbotts decided to terminate her pregnancy, for instance, she looked up clinics in the San Francisco phone book and chose one called A Free Pregnancy Center. She told a counselor she wanted an abortion and was shown a slide show that had "pictures of bloody fetuses in trash cans, and it said abortion led to sterility, death, deformed children and even suicide because of guilt." (NYT, "Right to Lie")

The Manhattan Pregnancy Services advertisement offers accurate abortion information. Ms. Sutnick of Planned Parenthood said the slide show that she saw there - presented at all three centers while women await test results - was filled with statistics about the dangers of abortion that have been disputed by the Centers for Disease Control. (NYT, Gross)

Kirk was given some forms to fill out. A woman took a urine sample for her test. While she was waiting for the results, the woman asked a series of questions about her religious beliefs and then told her about high rates of infection, depression and even death among women who had abortions, Kirk said. (WaPo, sonograms)

In Austin, the diocese hands out a booklet -- approved by the state -- that suggests a link between abortion and breast cancer, though the National Cancer Institute found no such connection. (SFGate, state funding)

a counselor told her that 50 percent of women who have an abortion get breast cancer and 30 percent die within a year of the procedure (Star-Telegram)

So it's pretty clear that all the sources substantiate the claim that the CPCs give out false information. I think the difference of opinion appears to be whether we can look at sources that say "CPCs say X and Y" and "X and Y are false" and write "CPCs say things that are false." I think that's completely a legitimate thing to say. Roscelese (talk) 03:09, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, I found something that confirms that the program did exist, was filmed by Five News, was presumably aired, and that the centers gave "incorrect information." Unfortunately, it's at thefreelibrary (which still appears to be RS, at least based on how much it's cited across Misplaced Pages) rather than at the Mirror, because newspapers apparently don't archive their articles aaaagh. Roscelese (talk) 03:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, I wish I had waited for your counter-analysis, as I started going through Kev's list and finding mistakes. At this point, are there any sources that still look like candidates for removal? Dylan Flaherty 03:39, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Depends on your editing philosophy. I agree that the NARAL and RHRealityCheck sources wouldn't be reliable by Misplaced Pages standards on their own, but here they just corroborate a bunch of journalistic sources - still, others might disagree. And as I said to Kev, I personally think it's completely acceptable to look at a dozen sources that say "CPCs claim abortion causes cancer, sterility, infection, and mental health problems" and dozens of other sources that say "oh no it doesn't actually" and write "CPCs provide false information" - to say nothing of the fact that such information is identified in a number of the sources as false anyway - but Kev apparently disagrees? Roscelese (talk) 03:53, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm open to reasoned argument, but I think that the only source that's worth considering the removal of is RHRealityCheck. NARAL, while making no attempt at neutrality, is nonetheless quite reliable in this matter. Based on ], WP:UNDUE and WP:RSMED, we are absolutely under no obligation to give equal time to views that are rejected by the medical mainstream. Dylan Flaherty 18:07, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2. It might suffice to describe Waxman, except that we're not actually describing Waxman here. Even if we followed your suggestion by trimming out any source with a hint of possible bias, there'd still be too many to usefully summarize here, except through a fair generalization such as "investigators". If we held sources to that requirement, we would simply have to delete the article outright, since that is an impossible hurdle. I've read WP:RS and WP:RSMED very carefully and I'm confident that these sources, as we use them, are acceptable.

2. I'm very sorry, but I don't know where you're getting this from. Besides the requirements of any clinic, who do you think is performing the abortions?

3 - I have no idea why you would say it comes down to that. Care Net is, as part of its affiliation program, requiring anyone employed by the CPC to be a signatory of the statement of faith. There is no suggestion that Care Net pays all of these people, since they are its customers, not employees. Perhaps you misspoke. If so, please feel free to explain yourself.

b - I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that CPCs and abortion clinics don't both look like clinics? Or are you saying that abortion clinics and CPCs look alike, but dental clinics are completely different? I was at a veterinary clinic just yesterday, and other than the posters showing pets, it looked just like my dentist's office. Also, consider that what we're calling abortion clinics are quite often clinics that also provide a variety of gynecological and general health services.

c - Actually, you already did challenge me and I already provided NIFLA's FAQ as the source. Search this page for the phrase "defined as a facility" and you'll see it again.

f - I may be misunderstanding, but I think you're talking about your recent move of the post-abortion/abortion-recovery sentence down to criticism. If so, I'm not thrilled about putting more content in the criticism ghetto, but I left it there for now.

h - Yes, actually, there are. For example, this clinic ad reads: "Offering 24 hour abortion services including emergency contraceptives, abortion pill, birth control, surgical abortions and Women's Health Services". Even without searching, I could just have easily pointed out that medical counseling about abortion is an abortion service.

I'm noticing that you made some more changes. As before, I will do my best to keep as many of them as possible while giving you an explanation for whatever I feel we cannot keep. Dylan Flaherty 21:33, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2 - How would we not be describing Waxman?

2 - Most clinics don't have a doctor on staff, the refer out for abortions. Where are you getting the bit about CPCs being legally prohibited from giving medical advice? CPCs offer medical services. Not as many as a hospital but enough to make the sentence fragment "do not offer medical services" untrue.

3 - Because our text reads "many require their staff to be Christian". Unless Christianity was a prerequisite for employment that sentence isn't true.

b. - Our sources, in no uncertain terms, say that CPCs look like abortion clinics. Is there any legitimate reason to deviate from what our sources lay out?

c. - I'm not taking a segment from an application that many not have been prepared by a lawyer, that may be outdated, that may be state specific or that may be taken out of context. Laws are not hard things to find. I'm challenging you under WP:V - if we are going to move forward with the assumption that there is a legal qualification that CPCs fail to meet I want to see the law.

h. - Reluctantly accepted. Different types of abortion are all still abortion but you have it under abortion counseling. - Schrandit (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2 It's pretty easy: we've got over a dozen sources for that statement in the lead, so we refer to them collectively as investigators without individually describing Waxman. This is a good thing, because it allows us to entirely avoid any debate over how to neutrally characterize him.

2. In order to qualify as a clinic, it must be "under the supervision and direction of a licensed physician". I don't see how that's possible without a physician on staff, do you? Now, while it's true that a minority of PP health centers refer abortions instead of performing them, even those are clinics, as indicated by the other medical services they provide. Take a look for yourself, at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-center/. It's a good resource and it makes these things quite clear.

3. It is entirely true that ", many require their staff to be Christian", as that is a prerequisite of affiliation. If a non-Christian already had a job at a CPC, it would not be able to join Care Net. And once a CPC does join Care Net, they cannot hire a non-Christian without being kicked out.

b. As I've explained, abortion clinics look like what they are: health clinics that happen to provide abortions. It's not like there's anything unique about their appearance. Perhaps in the old days, they used to have a sacrificial altar to Baal, but that hasn't been true for a few millennia.

Now, if you have some source that claims abortion clinics are distinct in appearance, I'd love to see it. Until you do, I'm not sure what else there is to say.

c. I never denied that a CPC can be a clinic, but we know that only that the majority of them are. The CPCs that offer on-site sonograms, and there are several hundred of these, are all clinics. The thousands of others are not.

I see no reason whatsoever to doubt the definition offered by NIFLA, which is a legal services organization run by lawyers, but I'm going to do you a favor by nailing the coffin shut on this line of inquiry. Under Title 42, a clinic must "provide medical care to outpatients" while "under the direction of a physician". We're done with this topic.

h. Actually, birth control is listed as an abortion service, and these aren't abortions either.

I noticed that you once again made sweeping changes without first discussing them. As usual, I can't promise that we'll keep any, but I'll do my best and explain the rest. Dylan Flaherty 17:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2 - That debate is very much worth having, you can't just duck it because it is convenient to avoid these questions.

2. - I see no reason to believe that medical services provided by a CPC are precluded from being labeled medical services.

3. - If our text read "is a prerequisite of affiliation. If a non-Christian already had a job at a CPC, it would not be able to join Care Net. And once a CPC does join Care Net, they cannot hire a non-Christian without being kicked out." that would be true. The text "many require their staff to be Christian" is a legally inaccurate and unsourced summation and cannot stand. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2 The debate is impossible to have so long as there are over a dozen sources. Wait until we finish our discussion about their reliability and relevance, which I see you're participating in.

2. - It's entirely true that some CPC's provide (limited) medical services, and I believe we say that. However, those are still a small minority (something like 20%, based on our sources). Past that, I believe we've already discussed the fact that the Care Net application explicitly excludes pregnancy tests and lay/peer counseling from the list of medical services. There doesn't seem to be anything new here.

3. I'm not a lawyer, so you're going to have to explain the distinction. To keep this grounded in reality, please make sure the explanation covers the case of a Care Net affiliate which is approached by a volunteer who is not Christian. Dylan Flaherty 17:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2 - Give me reason to hope.

2. - You've started taking Care Net's word for things now? Pregnancy tests are medical services, not particularly advanced or hard to come by ones but services none the less. It is untrue to state that the overwhelming majority of CPCs "do not offer medical services.".

3. - There is a very real, and legally important distinction that I thought would be obvious. Image a office that has received a grant for hiring a certain percentage of ex-convicts. It would be inaccurate (and potentially legally troubling) to say that their employees are required to be ex-convicts. - Schrandit (talk) 20:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

1.2 - "Hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." This line from the catechism, which I had long ago committed to memory, has always worked for me.

2. I'm hewing close to the legal criteria. Anyone can hand out self-service pregnancy tests, like the OTC ones. However, testing someone else's urine is a medical service, which is why it can only be done by medical clinics unless a CLIA waiver is obtained. Even including the waivers, our best data does not suggest that more than a quarter of all CPC's offer any medical services. Also, none of our data suggests that any CPC's offer medical counseling, as opposed to religious lay/peer. As counseling is the primary offering of CPCs, this leaves us with with serious WP:UNDUE problems if we falsely imply that anything in this regard.

3. I asked for an example that covers the case of a Care Net affiliate. You offered an example about grants, but Care Net is primarily an association which collects fees in return for benefits; any grants it helps a CPC obtain are distinct from membership requirements. If it helps, and at risk of seriously dating myself, let me offer you an example borrowed from a classic sitcom.

On "The Jeffersons", which is a spin-off of the more famous "All in the Family", George Jefferson is a black man who owns a chain of dry-cleaning stores. His company is therefore eligible join the Association of Minority-Owned Businesses. In return for his membership fees, the business is listed in a directory and may obtain certain services. If George were to become ill and sell the business to his conspicuously white neighbor, Tom Willis, then it would no longer qualify as minority-owned. However, if Tom signs the business over to his wife, Helen, then (because this is one of TV's earliest interracial marriages), the business would once again qualify.

Just as this association requires that the business be minority owned, Care Net requires CPCs to be staffed exclusively by Christians. If a CPC were to transfer control to Atheists for Life, Care Net would immediately eject them. Dylan Flaherty 21:21, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

While the analogy is fun, it's also just part of a really large red-herring discussion. Whether Care Net directly employs the people or not is kind of irrelevant, because the sentence as it stands now - Care Net...require employees to comply with a statement of faith - is completely true. We already know that Care Net is a network rather than an employer, so it's not as if it's misleading. But if y'all think it would be better, maybe the sentence could be replaced with something like "Centers affiliated with Care Net and CAPSS, the two largest CPC organizations in the United States and Canada respectively, require employees to comply with a statement of faith." That's even more precise. And we know that they require employees to conform to a statement of faith, because if they didn't, they could not be affiliates of Care Net and CAPSS. Roscelese (talk) 23:58, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm still stuck with the Jeffersons analogy, to the point where I'm tempted to call you a "honkey", whatever that means. However, what you say makes sense so I agree. Dylan Flaherty 00:12, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

2. - Forgive me, I have no seen anything that says medical services can only be procured from medical clinics. Is something to this effect codified in law? - Schrandit (talk) 15:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

3. - There is a very large (and legally important) distinction between "affiliated" and "employees". That aside, "require affiliates to comply with a statement of faith." would satisfy all of my concerns on this issue. - Schrandit (talk) 15:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

2. It's called practicing medicine without a license, and it's what CPCs would be charged with if they performed pregnancy tests for women without having a waiver. Insert your own joke here about men falsely claiming to be gynecologists.

3. That's insufficient, because it fails to make it clear that no CPC affiliated with these organizations may have employees or volunteers who fail the religious test. In other words, the agreement affects individuals, not merely organizations. Dylan Flaherty 15:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

2. - Outside of a citation for that, medical services are medical services.

3. - The current wording is legally unsound. If these CPC were run the way our current wording suggests a lawsuit would have shut most of them down a while ago. Why not give it a few extra word to fully explain the complexity of the arrangement? - Schrandit (talk) 18:46, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

2. We're inside a citation, so this is a closed issue.

3. I believe the current wording is correct. Dylan Flaherty 20:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

2. - I am uncertain as to which citation you are referring to. I do not believe that any have been presented that would lead us to categorize medical services as anything other than medical.

3. - I assure you, as a matter of law, it is not. - Schrandit (talk) 22:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Specifically, the "particularly abortion-breast cancer link" was an inaccurate summary of the sources - yes, many of the sources did say that, but they also talked about mental health risks, perforated uterus, infertility, birth defects in future children, infection, dying within a year of the procedure or something like that. I don't think we need to list every type of medical misinformation the CPCs gave, but we certainly shouldn't put undue emphasis on any one type. Roscelese (talk) 15:51, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's precisely it. The article should and will have a comprehensive list, but there's no room for it in the lead.

On an unrelated note, is it really just 2,300 centers now? We have other numbers putting them above 3,000, with some close to 4,000. It's clearly a growth industry. Dylan Flaherty 16:11, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd have thought the same. What's the source for that figure? I know that's what the Time piece had, but that's from over three years ago - is there a more current figure from a RS? Roscelese (talk) 16:37, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Depression, perforated uterus, infertility and infection all are possible side-effects of an abortion. All the sources that I read that made specific allegations singled out the ABC. I don't see how the sentence fragment I added was inaccurate. - Schrandit (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Very funny, but no, your personal opinion is not a reliable source for the risks of abortion. The studies contradict what the centers are saying, the major health organizations contradict what the centers are saying, and "well, you could get a perforated uterus, those instruments are sharp, you know!" is not a counter.

It's also quite clear, once again, that you haven't read the sources, because they list a wide variety of imagined side effects and do not single out cancer. Do you need me to quote them for you? Roscelese (talk) 00:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Not to get too caught up in the medical details, but a perforated uterus was quite possible in the days when an abortion meant a D&C, as a curette is indeed sharp-edged. I'm not even sure it's possible to perforate with vacuum aspiration, particularly not with MVA, which is even gentler. Ironically, many of the complications that made abortion relatively risky back in the old days have been mitigated by the same sonograms that CPCs use to dissuade women from abortion.

I've said it before but I'm going to say it again; there are many good reasons not to abort, but these reasons are grounded in morality, not medicine. Dylan Flaherty 00:26, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

My point is that obviously there are risks, as there are risks to dental surgery and triple bypasses and liposuction. But they're not substantial, they're indeed far less than the risks from childbirth, and in any case - the only really important point - they're not what the CPCs are saying they are. Lest anyone has missed it, one of the CPCs visited in the cited sources said that 30 percent die within a year of the procedure!! Roscelese (talk) 00:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Aren't you both ignoring severe psychological risks? --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 00:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Nope. Roscelese (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Uhm, I'm not sure why your response is here, but I'll be glad to explain.

If you give a sip of clean water to a few thousand people, some will die. Of course, if you deny that sip to a control group, some will also die. After all, people do die. If the mortality rate in the experimental group is higher to a statistically significant level, we then say that water has a quantifiable risk of death. Otherwise, we do not, even though we found people dying after they had the water.

In the case of mortality from abortion (as well as morbidity in terms of infection, infertility, depression and so on), the medical risk from childbirth exceeds that of a first-trimester abortion. As such, it would be medically inaccurate to speak of abortion as being risky, since it must be evaluated against the risk of the alternative. This error is compounded when the M&M rate is artificially inflated to justify the claim of risk, and when non-existent syndromes or disease correlations are postulated.

This is the reason that the medical claims commonly made by CPCs are considered misleading and false. In listing these errors, we must include ABC, PAS, and all the rest, rather than singling just one out. Dylan Flaherty 21:33, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

So all of them mentioned the ABC with others making sporadic and non-consistent complaints. How is it inaccurate to say that criticism focused around the ABC? - Schrandit (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

We have no data to suggest that ABC is the most common medical inaccuracy. If anything, we seem to have more mentions of PAS, and each source with the ABC error also contains many other errors. Not sure what else to say about this. Dylan Flaherty 17:45, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

We have no data to suggest anything, all of this is based on the investigative sources listed and they all talk about the ABC. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Schrandit, I have to admit that I've been very disappointed with your most recent round of comments. You are, as always, entitled to your own opinion, but you seem to be coming in with your own facts. You can't help but to be aware of the many, many sources that mention PAS, infertility, death and other false medical claims, in addition to the ABC one. Given this, your comment above is frankly inexplicable.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but if you feel that you need a short break from this article, you should understand that you will always be welcome when you return and nobody will think any less of you for it. As it stands, I'm sorry to have to say that you've reached a point where your participation is not improving the article. I'd much rather have you well-rested and ready to collaborate effectively than be forced to continually give you bad news. Again, I mean this advice with only the best intentions, so please accept it as such. Dylan Flaherty 17:30, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I did a little digging and found the following citation:

Lawrence B. Finer and Stanley K. Henshaw, Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States in 2000, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2003, 35(1): 6-15

It was used to support this text:

"CPCs far outnumber abortion clinics. There are 4,000 CPCs in the United States, compared to about 800 abortion clinics. In Canada, there are about 200 CPCs and roughly 25 abortion clinics."

This certainly supports increasing the number, but the report is dated 2003.

However, it does point to a new source. I'll keep digging. Dylan Flaherty 03:53, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

POV tag

If this section isn't filled in with a list of current objections, I will remove the tag in 24 hours. This is a point of order, enforcing WP:NPOVD. Dylan Flaherty 22:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a good step in improving the article. The POV tag cannot be used as a badge of shame; it must be associated with a current discussion of actionable solutions. Binksternet (talk) 22:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Gone now. Since there's been no compelling reason given to keep the other changes, I've reverted them pending new/stronger arguments. Dylan Flaherty 01:00, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Why I cut out the ironic reversal sentence

I'd like to explain why I just removed:

Conversely, some abortion clinics have been known to present themselves as CPCs to mislead pregnant women seeking support into being propositioned for an abortion.

The obvious but fixable problems are that it says "some" when the source says one and says "known" when so far it's just accused. Less fixable is the sourcing, which is currently a "Canadian national pro-life organization" that cites nothing. Google turned up repeats of the story, but only in clearly pro-life sites, and then only in blogs and other low-quality venues. Given that this is an accusation of a crime and targets a clinic by name, I think we need a more reliable source. It should be possible, as legal proceedings are matters of public record and this sort of ironic reversal makes good press.

Now, if we can get a better reference, and fix the two issues with language, there's a place for it somewhere in the article. Dylan Flaherty 13:18, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. The source is not reliable.

Also, I have found no mention of the case in New York UCS Search Decisions or New York WebCivil Supreme.

--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:41, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the research. Also, your recent edit did correct some tortured language, and is much appreciated. Dylan Flaherty 03:55, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I did a bit more digging and I found , and . I do so hate the ironic reversal sentence format on Misplaced Pages (X happened but Y also happened with the implication that Y invalidates X) but I could think of another, better way to include that information. Any ideas? - Schrandit (talk) 12:29, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I read through the links carefully. The third source is basically useless, as it's an editorial that's high on professional outrage and low on details. We already know more than we ever wanted to about the flaws of Eliot "Can't Keep It In My Pants" Spitzer.

For the first two, it would have helped if we had more than abstracts, but what we have is enough to actively prevent us from inserting the suggested text. According to the abstracts, the clinic settled what it calls a nuisance suit, and did not accept responsibility for misrepresenting or misleading. In fact, we have no reliable sources to support those strong terms, and we're not going to get one at this rate. It would be quite plausible for the clinic to claim that they took out ads on the "abortion" keyword and it's not their fault that CPCs have a category that misleadingly mentions abortion.

What's left? Well, I suppose that we could say that there was a single incident, four years ago, in which an abortion provider was accused of doing what CPCs do every day, but it didn't really pan out. This would be a poster child for WP:UNDUE and WP:COATRACK.

I'm sorry, but it looks like this one is dead, barring some shocking admission of intent by the clinic. Dylan Flaherty 15:10, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, unless something new emerges I'll just move a sentence down to the Court Cases section. - Schrandit (talk) 13:18, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe it fits there, either. As I said, because there was never a victory in court and the settlement did not admit to anything, we have nothing to mention that would survive WP:UNDUE and WP:COATRACK. I think the best thing to do right now would be to remove it. Dylan Flaherty 15:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

We mention other cases that did not come to judgement, hell, we even talk about Spitzer who had to withdrawl his suits. How is this different? - Schrandit (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Again, this comment seems out of place, but I'll respond.

I cut down the Spitzer section precisely because nothing much happened. I'm thinking of cutting it down again, perhaps merging it with recent activity in NY. Dylan Flaherty 21:33, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Spitzer, whose lawsuit was literally so frivolous that it had to be withdrawn, gets a paragraph but one sentence about a suit that moved to trial and ended in a multi-institutional settlement is undue? If Spitzer stays so does this. - Schrandit (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Under, WP:UNDUE, our job is to report things in rough proportion to their importance, where one indication of this is coverage. Spitzer's actions were widely reported, while it took us days to confirm even the existence of the Dr. Emily case. This is to be expected, since he was the Attorney General issuing nearly a dozen subpoenas, whereas Dr. Emily was sued in civil court and settled it as a nuisance suit.

It doesn't help your case that your characterization is inaccurate. It turns out that the legal attempt to quash the subpoenas failed, so it would an error to say they "had to be withdrawn" because they were frivolous. Instead, as the article mentions, they served his purpose by allowing him to work out a model agreement with one of the CPC's.

For these reason, there is no basis for mentioning the Dr. Emily case at all. At this point, if you insert it in the article, I will not be able to keep it. Dylan Flaherty 17:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It too me 90 seconds to find more sources. If the Dr. Emily's source is undue because it failed to achieve a verdict then there is no reason to keep the Spitzer subpoenas. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and we discussed the fact that the content of those sources leaves us unable to mention the case without violating WP:UNDUE. I don't see how any of your comments might be interpreted to address this issue. Dylan Flaherty 17:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You're application of UNDUE is recent and uneven. All other legal cases in that section have a single source. There is no good reason to exclude this. - Schrandit (talk) 20:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

This is not about a single source. Some of the reasons given were: 1) this is a singular incident without precedent (undue) whereas the reverse situation is ubiquitous 2) it was settled without an admission of guilt (blp/npov). Those are more than enough. Dylan Flaherty 21:28, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

The reverse situation has all of 2 court cases (three, if you really wanted to count the appeal in ND as 2 separate cases.). 2 cases does not ubiquity make. The lack of settlement is an argument for inclusion in a different section, not for exclusion. - Schrandit (talk) 15:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Except we have a number of secondary sources which indicate that it's a perennial issue, whereas your case appears to have no non-local news coverage. From the Times: Nearly a dozen similar suits are still pending around the country. And from the other Times article (Lewin): Advertising by anti-abortion centers, often known as crisis pregnancy centers or pregnancy counseling services, has been debated for a decade. In 1991, at hearings on the issue, Congress estimated that there were 2,000 such centers nationwide, many advertising themselves as abortion clinics, and the lawmakers wrote guidelines for telephone companies in handling their advertising. From "Sonograms" (WaPo): The National Abortion Federation has received hundreds of calls and e-mails from women who say they went into pregnancy centers with vague or confusing names, many of them found under "abortion services" headings in the phone book. And so on and so forth. It's not even necessary for all the suits to have found the CPCs guilty - if there were an equivalent number of suits against abortion providers for false advertising, it would absolutely be worth a mention, but...there aren't. Roscelese (talk) 00:18, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Great! Go and find those suits and include them in the article. In the meantime no reason for the censorship of the New York case has been presented. - Schrandit (talk) 18:46, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Researching with the enemy and other pro tips

It's occurred to me that most of my research for this article has been in newspaper articles and CPC sites. I think we also need to look at sites that are explicitly hostile towards CPCs, not because they're necessarily reliable sources (though some are), but because they are hubs for information that is otherwise scattered. One site that's helped me a bit is http://cpcwatch.org/, so I figured I should share it here.

For example, during the discussion of how widespread false information is, I didn't want to just count on sources like NARAL, but I also didn't want to scour the internet on the off chance that I'd bump into sources. Instead, I went to http://cpcwatch.org/Warning-Signs.php, which listed 13 sites that (allegedly) provide false information, and was able to confirm that the allegations about the first one are true.

Note how this also allows us to avoid undue synthesis, since we're just verifying a potentially unreliable source (the biased CPCWatch) by following its claims and comparing them against reliable sources on the topic of medical information about abortion. So, for example, that site claimed abortion is linked to cancer, but we have an entire article that's full of medical sources that refute this. Dylan Flaherty 20:21, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Purpose of post-abortion counseling

Roscelese, I'm fine with "both". Dylan Flaherty 22:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

So "ban the procedure or discourage women from having abortions"? Or the non-specific "end"? (I'm indifferent - it's just that the source cited talks about the political aspects, so I think it should be mentioned or alluded to somehow.) Roscelese (talk) 22:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The source I added talked about how effective it was to lie to a woman about mental health problems induced by abortion, which would be an example of "discourage women from having abortions". The NYT article that originally supported it seems to be about the political aspect, but it also mentions CPCs, which are generally not involved at the political level, as they effectively run under the motto of "change minds, not laws".

The post-abortion counseling I'm most familiar with is in the context of Rachel's Vineyard, which is not a CPC. I love that they're reaching out to those who feel distanced from the Church by the fact that they had an abortion, but the web site makes it clear that it's also a source for "abortion ruined me" testimonials and links to medically dishonest shock sites like http://www.afterabortion.org, both of which are used as cautionary tales to bully young women into choosing life.

Speaking very personally, I only wish CPCs sought to change minds by being consistently honest, kind and fair, instead of all too often lying, scaring and guilting. All that's done is deservedly give them a reputation that would scare off the very same women they wish to influence. On a deeper level, I have to wonder if we are so Machiavellian now that we think this particular end justifies any means, that we should violate our highest principles in the rush to support them.

And yet I'm guilty of this, in my own way, as I have made a sophisticated distinction between the Church's ban on artificial contraception as the right answer for Catholics and the wrong answer for everyone else. Or, to be fair, the ideal for all, but if you must fall short of it in order to avoid an unwanted pregnancy that puts you in the position where you might consider an abortion, then so be it. Yet CPCs talk constantly of "abortion-vulnerable" women with little mention of the fact it just means women who wish they weren't pregnant. As a see it, a thoroughgoing commitment against abortion entails an acceptance, however grudging, of artificial contraception, with prevention being a lesser evil than the cure.

Ahem. I think you can see why I have a bit of friction with the Church, even though I am exceedingly faithful and loyal to it. Or, as I see it, precisely because I am so faithful and loyal. Life is complicated, pro-life no less so.

Getting back to the article, having cleared my mind by speaking it, I'm not sure that the change I originally made was a good one. I do think we need to mention the "post-abortion syndrome" issue somewhere in the Services section, but not there. It occurs to me that, while we do a good job talking about the range of services, we don't really explain what it's like to go to one. For example, we mention the free pregnancy tests, but not about being counseled or watching a video while you wait for the results, or how a positive is treated. We don't mention the specific medical inaccuracies, such as ABC, PAS and infertility. We're leaving out the meat while fighting over controversies. Some of these issues are hinted at in the criticism section, but we shouldn't be isolating and separating like that. If it's mixed in then it balances and is balanced by the surrounding content, instead of being an afterthought. Dylan Flaherty 23:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I mean, the thing with the line about the goal of post-abortion counseling is that it's kind of extraneous to the article (I don't follow Abortion and mental health but I assume such counseling is discussed there). I am completely open about having added it to avoid having a one-sentence paragraph, and if you think having it there isn't a good idea, I'm cool with removing it now that the paragraph is more than one sentence without it.

I think adding more information about the experience seems like a good idea. Roscelese (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The NYT article linked post-abortion counseling with CPCs for a reason, which is also the reason we should make some mention of it. It's fine where it is, but we're probably going to wind up moving the reference I added once there's a paragraph that is a closer fit for it.

Before we start filling in the outline I sketched out above, is there an reliable document we could use as our primary source? Dylan Flaherty 23:50, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

As a source on the CPC experience? Well, a lot of the newspaper articles I cited talk about the experience in general. And CPC websites sometimes have testimonies, which for this purpose I would probably consider RS if they provide specific information (ie. "they showed me a video and gave me a small pair of socks" not "they were great!!"). Roscelese (talk) 01:09, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Right, we're looking for something factual, not a review that ends with thumbs up or down. As you may have noticed, I'm not a great writer and I particularly have a problem with my line of thought wandering, so I sometimes make outlines and notes to work from. I don't usually do this for Misplaced Pages (and it shows), but let me share what I have so far, not as a direct proposal for inclusion in the article, but as a starting point. I'll post it in its own section. Dylan Flaherty 02:58, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Case study

Case Study of EMC Frontline Pregnancy Centers, a high-profile chain in NY (based on http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/21/opinion/the-right-to-lie.html and http://www.emcfrontline.org)

1. Looks like a doctor's office, but isn't. Is in low-income communities, close to Planned Parenthood. Waiting room includes video loop of graphic abortions.
2. Web site also mentions mobile unit, which is an RV/camper. BTW, EMC stands for Expectant Mother Care; the M does not mean medical, the way it does in EMT. According to NY1, (http://www.emcfrontline.org/story.php?id=23), "Planned Parenthood of New York City called it a trap for women.", quoting: "They expect to receive neutral comprehensive medical care and instead are greeted with manipulation and ideology designed to coerce and scare them,” said Planned Parenthood of New York City’s president, Joan Malin, in a statement."
3. Back to the CPC according to the NYT, asked to fill out paperwork, both about the medical aspects and religious beliefs, such as church affiliation and baptismal status. Yes, this center is very much explicitly Christian.
4. Volunteers trend towards older women. Told about saving lives, free will, living with choices.
5. Commitments made towards housing, health care and a job, including job for partner and money for school, contingent upon the pregnancy not being terminated. Nothing in writing and not within advertised scope of services (see below).
6. Provided urine for pregnancy test but told it was inconclusive (despite being 23 weeks pregnant!). Immediately prepped for a sonogram, ostensibly to confirm pregnancy.
7. Sonagram took less than five minutes but was described as giving "the baby a full examination" and declaring "your baby is healthy and perfect". No doctor or nurse, and much too short for a full check-up. Emphasis instead on calling fetus or embryo a baby and insisting on its good health (regardless of lack of evidence).
8. CPC admitted clearly that abortion would not be on the table, and that the center was here to do God's work.
9. Much affection, to the point of love-bombing as per cult technique. Is this typical?
10. According to their own web site (http://emcfrontline.org/page.php?id=1), they have a success rate of about 1/3.
11. Site mentions "partnerships with supervising physicians" for ultrasound, although no physician specifically supervised this procedure.
12. "One of its centers is located across the street from Planned Parenthood, and one is housed in the same building as a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and a second abortion Mill-Dr. Emily's, and other centers are next door to, or are down the block from other abortion clinics."
13. "EMC has the most paid-staff working in pregnancy centers statewide (10)." - Clearly, most centers are staffed by volunteers with just a paid director, if that.
14. Links to a DBA at http://abortion-options.com/, which says nothing about the various post-pregnancy commitments. Ditto for http://emcfrontline.org/page.php?id=5. Says "Minors OK" without mentioning legal disclosure issues.
15. Basic math (which is not WP:OR) says that they averaged under 11 clients per day over the course of 25 years. Presumably, this average reflects much lower numbers back when there was just a single center, not 10+. Even so, it's not at all big. A single doctor can easily see more than that number of patients in a day at a clinic, and these people aren't doctors. They're also all full on volunteers, so it's not like they need more smiling faces.
16. Site says (http://www.emcfrontline.org/page.php?id=5) "Our goals are to encourage expectant moms to choose motherhood, and either marriage, adoption, or self-sufficiency, and to turn toward chaste lifestyles". They're not kidding about chastity: nowhere is contraception even mentioned.
17. Unfortunately, client/reporter did not stick around long enough to hear anything about medical risks. We'll have to use another source for that.

That's all I have for now. I'm open to comments and suggestions. Dylan Flaherty 03:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Looking back, I'm really not happy with this approach. The article I extracted information from was basically a write-up of one woman's visit to one clinic once. Calling it a case study doesn't fix this.

If we're going to report what it's like to go to a clinic, this will likely mean making some statements that are true but controversial. These are natural targets for entirely reasonable complaints about picking and choosing a non-representative example. What this means is that we can't go entirely on our own research, and we can't use only pro or con sources.

I think the key is to recognize that there aren't 4000+ independent centers. While there might be a few of those out there, especially limited-hours centers run out of other institutions, such as churches, these are not the mainstream. The mainstream revolves around a few names that keep showing up. So if we can cover those, we won't be putting our own spin on anything.

A great example of the sort of source we need is the appendix in http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/Exposing-CPCs-in-BC.pdf. This goes over items in the CAPPS training manual and has a physician point out errors, mentioning both America and Canada. Still, it's a pro-choice (hence anti-CPC) source, so we have to be careful. I was also annoyed that, however this organization got that manual, it wasn't by searching for it on Google!

That got me thinking. Through a series of pro and con sites, I bumped into a complaint about a company called eKYROS, based on the claim that it violates client confidentiality by uploading data to a centralized location. Putting this aside for a moment (although we may yet return to it), the site sells software for internal use by CPC's and is associated with, well, just about everyone. Here's the list from the Community Links section of http://www.ekyros.com/Pub/:

At The Center, CAPSS, CareNet, Focus on the Family, Heartbeat International, Life Begins, Life Steward Ministries, MobileUltrasound.org, NIFLA, PCCTalk.org, OptionLine, Stand Up Girl.com

If that's not exhaustive, it's certainly comprehensive, not to mention representative. The main page had a chart-of-the-day, which was a pie chart listing pregnancy test results YTD 2010. There were 188,442 clients covered, which means that all of eKYROS' customers together see fewer than 200,000 women a year (barring some huge Christmastime increase, of course). More interestingly, 114,775 (61%) tested positive, 64,721 (34%) negative, 8,157 (4%) brought proof of pregnancy from a previous test, and only 789 (0%) were inconclusive. Wow! Before, we could suggest that it was very unlikely for that reporter to have had an inconclusive test, based on general medical knowledge. Now we can put a hard number on it, and that number is effectively zero. That's amazing!

Even better, it has documents online in PDF files, and these give a first-hand indication of how things work inside the center. For example, http://www.ekyros.com/Pub/DesktopModules/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=66 is a treasure trove of detailed, accurate information, without any chance of bias by pro-choice/anti-CPC sources. We can be fair and comprehensive, without all the hedging and guessing.

There are even more reports at http://www.ekyros.com/Pub/Default.aspx?tabindex=3&tabid=16. The first has age breakdowns and total served. 1.33% are under 15, 24.61% are 15-19, 34.23% are 20-24, 18.79% are 25-29, 9.26% are 30-34, with the 35 and over being 7.02%. The 4.18% for unknown age gives us some insight into how often they don't ask for age and/or don't get an answer.

Note that we can ask for previous years and correlate measures such as age, race, marital status, religion, education, income and gender. Here we learn that religion is unknown in 22.69%. To put it another way, it means there's over a 75% chance that they will find out your religion. We can also see that about 60% are Christian (if you don't break out Catholics as they did), with None coming in at 8.83%, far behind Unknown. They separate out Catholics, JW's and Mormons from Christians. They misspell Mormon as "Morman" and seem to think that Wicca is an acronym. Their breakdown for spiritual status is 36.43% unknown, 35.64% already a believer (in Jesus, I presume), 13.68% not a believer, 10.18% unsure, with 3.34% giving a profession of faith and 0.73% rededicating themselves.

Another report tracks test results as compared to factors such as birth control, age, marital status, race, religion, birth control, initial abortion risk assessment, stated intentions support and changed abortion view. For example, 74.69% of all clients were not on birth control. Of those with positive test results, the figure was 77.87%, while it's 83.36% for the proof-of-pregnancy group. Only 18.51% are married. It also tells us that 50.84% were initially likely to carry, with 29.38% "abortion vulnerable" and 8.52% "abortion minded". The stated intentions skews more towards birth, with 59.24% intending to carry, 7.89% undecided and 3.3% planning to abort. Note that 9.72% were undecided and a whopping 19.84% were not appliable; why would it not be applicable unless the women were so far along in their pregnancy that abortion wasn't a legal options? For changed abortion view, 4.35% were claimed, with 4.59% unknown. This is along with 48.68% already planning to carry, 7.61% not changing abortion view, and 34.76% negative/inconclusive.

I have to admit I'm overwhelmed by the flood of hard numbers. There's a lot more in there that I haven't analyzed, such as user manuals which explain the techniques, the topics of interest and so on. At this point, I think we can start integrating some of this data, and I would certainly be open to assistance. Dylan Flaherty 05:35, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Just a possiblity on the 19.84% NA - I know a girl who volunteered at the CPCs and she said a good number of their clients were already intent on having their baby but were financially poorly off and knew that the CPCs could help them out (free prenatal, clothes for the baby etc.). - Schrandit (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, we already know that a narrow majority initially intend to carry to term, so why would these women be counted as "NA" instead of being grouped in with that majority?

My best guess -- and I haven't confirmed it -- is that they might be accounting for men who come in with women, since they are cannot be pregnant. Dylan Flaherty 21:33, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Explanation of changes kept and reverted

aa) While "as well child-rearing resources, adoption referrals and peer counseling" is accurate, it's also in the wrong place. The sentence is limited to medical information so that the next sentence can comment on its accuracy. Instead, we mention these in the next section, on services. I merged your list into the longer one below. Also, you removed citations, where there is no consensus for doing so.

bb) As noted elsewhere, it's not clear how abortion clinics differ from other medical clinics in terms of appearance. Dylan Flaherty 21:52, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of the lead is not summarize sources in a format most convenient for the opposition to rebut. - Schrandit (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of the lead is to provide a summary of the article. Sticking things in where they don't fit in does not help in this regard. Dylan Flaherty 17:49, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

And why doesn't this fit? - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The first sentence describes the scope of the medical information covered by counseling. The next sentence, per WP:NPOV, comments on the validity of that information. These sentences fit tightly together as a logical unit; they're a highly cohesive paragraph. If the first sentence were intended as a list of all possible services and the second did not logically depend on the first being limited to medical information, then you would have a point. For that matter, if we censored the list of additional services from the article, you would have a point. But these are just counterfactual conditions. Dylan Flaherty 17:37, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

This paragraph is two sentences. A minuscule one on some of the services provided by CPCs and followed by a ironic reversal sentence twice that length. I see no good reason not to expand on this information. - Schrandit (talk) 20:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I would think that the answer is obvious: Add a sentence listing additional services, placing it after this paragraph. There's still some support for increasing the lead, and this preserves the logical structure while fulfilling all of your requirements. Dylan Flaherty 21:23, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Very well. - Schrandit (talk) 15:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Schrandit, I've very sorry to say that, after going over the latest edit, I was unable to keep any of the changes because they were repeats of items that had already been rejected with sound justifications. The one that I would have been willing to keep is the move of "abortion-recovery" counseling line to the criticism section, but while I accepted it grudgingly the first time, it has since been rejected by other editors. On the whole, there does not appear to be any consensus in support of these suggestions.

It seems that you've hit the wall, in that you have temporarily run out of suggestions that haven't already been turned down. I know you might feel like your input is being excluded, but I'd like to counsel you not to give up. It's possible you might find reliable sources that allow the inclusion of at least some of these items, and I'm sure you have new ideas that have the potential to fit into the article. There's also plenty more for us to do if we're to integrate the eKyros data; perhaps you could help with that. Again, I'm very sorry it's come down to this, but let's keep at it. Dylan Flaherty 18:03, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Cathie Adams?

Why are we including the line that mentions her, particularly under that section heading? Dylan Flaherty 00:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea, but as this article still needs a lot of work, removing it wasn't my top priority. Roscelese (talk) 00:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Not mine, either, but if we can't think of any reason to keep it, then that's that. Dylan Flaherty 01:00, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Lede sentence: However, investigations have routinely found that CPCs disseminate false medical information about the alleged health risks of abortion.

Hi everyone,

The discussion about one sentence in the lede is getting lost in the megadiscussion going on above.

The sentence I want to talk about is

However, investigations have routinely found that CPCs disseminate false medical information about the alleged health risks of abortion.

I propose that we organize this discussion. I'll put my signature in here multiple times so that people can comment on parts without worrying that they are breaking my comment into pieces.

--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Is the sentence supported by RS?

• Yes. At least two sources, "Waxman" and "austin", directly support the sentence.--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Should the sentence be in the lede?

• Yes. The sentence should be in the lede to add balance or context to the previous sentence: "CPCs provide women with information related to abortion, pregnancy and childbirth."--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

How many references should the sentence have?

• I suggest that two are sufficient.--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

More than 4 or 5 is excessive. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• All of them. Citations for controversial claims are like tooth enamel. Enamel is incredibly strong, so each of our teeth is coated with much more than is actually needed. Why? Because, as strong as it is, it tends to get worn down over time and can be broken down by bacterial acid. The "excess" is actually just a safety margin. In the same way, citations are questioned, links break, things change. By having an "excess" of citations, this protects the claim from decay. If this were any less controversial an article, and if the claim wasn't so very strong, perhaps we could do with fewer. As it stands, I'd be content with a few more. Dylan Flaherty 17:42, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I encourage you to share your reasoning, as an unsupported conclusion is not very convincing. Dylan Flaherty 17:42, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• As many as possible. In another situation, I might suggest otherwise, but given the constant attempts to discredit perfectly reliable sources, more sourcing can only be an improvement. Nice analogy, Dylan. Roscelese (talk) 17:57, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: Thanks, but I can't take any credit for it. I was going to go with elevator cables being able to support 7x the listed weight, but my wife suggested dental enamel, and that one just made more sense. Teeth are subject to gradual wear, whereas elevators need to deal with momentary spikes in load due to movement. I'll pass on your praise, since she deserves it. Dylan Flaherty 18:12, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• Two or three of the best ones should be sufficient once consensus is established here. Afterward, editors can point to this discussion to restore the supported text. To my mind, too many references is an indication of synthesis or insecurity, not an indication of strength and assurance. Binksternet (talk) 18:31, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: According to the old joke, you're not paranoid if they're really out to get you. In the same way, given the history of attempts to erode all support for this strong statement, it's not insecurity, it's common sense. With a scary number of citations, perhaps people will realize that the statement is incontrovertibly true before launching any attempt to discredit the sources. With three or four, all it takes is a slow week when nobody's watching, and the sentence will be removed on some pretext or another? If I sound paranoid, please consult that joke. Dylan Flaherty 18:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Fine, pick five. But pick. - Schrandit (talk) 20:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems like the most popular are Austin, Gross, Star and Miami so I'll figure on keeping those. - Schrandit (talk) 22:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Reference by reference discussion

Waxman

<ref name="Waxman">Committee on Government Reform — Minority Staff Special Investigations Division (July 2006). False and Misleading Health Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers (PDF). United States House of Representatives. {{cite conference}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |booktitle= (help)</ref>

• quote: "During the investigation, 20 of the 23 centers (87%) provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion."
  • does the ref support the statement? Yes
  • is the ref a reliable source? Yes
  • my overall vote: Keep--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep Dylan Flaherty 00:05, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Roscelese (talk) 00:43, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

austin

<ref name="austin">Smith, Jordan (August 4, 2006). "Having Your Baby". Austin Chronicle.</ref>

• quote: "Unfortunately, none of the information is medically accurate."
  • does the ref support the statement? Yes
  • is the ref a reliable source? Yes
  • my overall vote: Keep--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep Dylan Flaherty 00:06, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Roscelese (talk) 00:43, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

lie

<ref name="lie">"The Right to Lie?". The New York Times. February 21, 1987.</ref>

• quote: "In Texas, another such center and its founder were found guilty of deceptive trade practices and fined $39,000. Three New York City centers have been investigated by the State Attorney General, Robert Abrams, and a negotiated settlement is expected soon."
  • does the ref support the statement? No. The ref mentions mentions deceptive trade practices, but not false medical information. It supports a different statement:

    However, courts have routinely found that CPCs use deceptive trade practices.

  • is the ref a reliable source? No. It occurs in the opinion section of NYT.
  • my overall vote: Delete--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Early on, it says:

She told a counselor she wanted an abortion and was shown a slide show that had pictures of bloody fetuses in trash cans, and it said abortion led to sterility, death, deformed children and even suicide because of guilt.

This supports the claim that false medical information ("sterility, death, deformed children and even suicide because of guilt") is disseminated. The falseness of these claims is itself adequately supported elsewhere.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep, sentence Dylan quotes supports statement about false information. Roscelese (talk) 00:44, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

DeleteThis is an opinion piece from 23 years ago. Why is it here? - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: The fact that she was given false medical information is not affected by the article's status as an opinion piece, as it is not an opinion. As for age, this confirms that the practice is not recent. Dylan Flaherty 18:48, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

gross

<ref name="gross">Gross, Jane (1987-01-23). "Pregnancy Centers: Anti-Abortion Role Challenged". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-06. </ref>

• quote: "The center ... is one of three ... that are the subject of a nearly completed investigation by State Attorney General Robert Abrams, ... charging deceptive advertising."
  • does the ref support the statement? No. The ref mentions mentions deceptive advertising, but not false medical information. It would support a weaker statement:

    However, an investigation by NY State Attorney General Robert Abrams found that three CPCs use deceptive advertising.

  • is the ref a reliable source? Yes
  • my overall vote: Delete one use--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Odd, it looks like my edit here was lost, so I'll repeat.

Bits:

At the time of Ms. Weinstock's visit, she said, she was told that urine and blood tests were identical and that a urine sample did not need to be taken the first thing in the morning. Both pieces of information are incorrect.

The Manhattan Pregnancy Services advertisement offers accurate abortion information. Ms. Sutnick of Planned Parenthood said the slide show that she saw there - presented at all three centers while women await test results - was filled with statistics about the dangers of abortion that have been disputed by the Centers for Disease Control.

This shows that it supports the claim. Referencing the CDC is a good thing, not a bad thing. Remember, a reliable source reporting on a reliable source is... reliable.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 00:05, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep, sentence Dylan quotes supports claim of false information. Roscelese (talk) 00:45, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - Source has nothing to do with medical information. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I'm sorry to have to point this out, but the stated reason is demonstrably false. Dylan Flaherty 17:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Sonograms

<ref name="Sonograms">Chandler, Michael Alison (2006-09-09). "Antiabortion Centers Offer Sonograms to Further Cause". Washington Post. Washington Post. p. html. Retrieved 2008-02-24.</ref>

• quote: "Abortion rights activists are calling for tighter regulations. They say the antiabortion centers mislead women about the health effects of abortion."
  • does the ref support the statement? No. The quote is reified. The Washington Post is not putting their own neck on the line to support the statement. It would support a weaker sentence:

    However, abortion rights activists say that CPCs disseminate false medical information about the alleged health risks of abortion.

  • is the ref a reliable source? Yes
  • my overall vote: Delete one use--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Bits:

"They can set up a waiting room and an exam room, but that doesn't mean they employ actual medical practices," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, a D.C.-based network of abortion providers.

The next line related to the discussion we had about CPCs as medical clinics, not to the inclusion debate:

The institute also helps centers complete paperwork to become medical clinics. In most states, the process is fairly simple. The main requirement is for a licensed physician to become the medical director and supervise medical services, though the director does not have to work on site, institute President Thomas A. Glessner said.

Nurses are taught to determine whether a pregnancy is viable and to identify the sex. They are not taught to identify developmental problems.

While she was waiting for the results, the woman asked a series of questions about her religious beliefs and then told her about high rates of infection, depression and even death among women who had abortions, Kirk said.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:16, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep, sentence Dylan quotes supports claim that CPCs give out false information. Roscelese (talk) 00:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete source only quotes abortion activists. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I'm sorry to have to point this out again, but the stated reason is demonstrably false. Dylan Flaherty 17:18, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

statefunding

<ref name="statefunding">Abortion foes are getting public funds, San Francisco Gate</ref>

• quote: "Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, an abortion rights supporter, last year asked undercover investigators to contact 23 crisis pregnancy centers; 20 gave misleading information, such as exaggerating the risk of abortion, he reported."
  • does the ref support the statement? No, for two reasons: (1)The quote is reified; (2) it talks about "misleading information" not "misleading health information" It would support a weaker statement:

However, Henry Waxman reports that CPCs disseminate false information about the alleged risks of abortion.

• • is the ref a reliable source? Yes
  • my overall vote: Delete one use --Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

First, let me comment that the misleading information included health risks: this is medical.

Ok, now for the bits:

In Austin, the diocese hands out a booklet -- approved by the state -- that suggests a link between abortion and breast cancer, though the National Cancer Institute found no such connection.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep, sentence Dylan quotes supports claim of false information. Roscelese (talk) 00:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - Just rehashes Waxman. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I'm sorry to have to point this out again, but the stated reason is demonstrably false. Dylan Flaherty 17:18, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

startelegram

<ref name="startelegram">Jarvis, Jan (September 13, 2010). "Advertising practices of crisis pregnancy centers raise concerns". Fort Worth Star-Telegram.</ref>

• quote: "In April, Austin became the second city in the country to adopt an ordinance requiring crisis pregnancy centers to post signs stating that they do not offer abortions or provide contraceptives."
  • does the ref support the statement? No. It supports a different statement:

    Several cities in the U.S. require crisis pregnancy centers to post signs stating that they do not offer abortions or provide contraceptives.

  • is the ref a reliable source? Yes
  • my overall vote: Delete one use --Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Bits:

Instead, she was shown a 20-minute video of "fetuses, complications and horrible things."

Then a counselor told her that 50 percent of women who have an abortion get breast cancer and 30 percent die within a year of the procedure, said Sarah, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her privacy.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:21, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. 50% getting cancer and 30% dying within a year isn't false enough for you? Roscelese (talk) 00:48, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - Anon woman from pro-abortion source. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I'm sorry to have to point this out again, but the stated reason is demonstrably false. Dylan Flaherty 17:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

star

<ref name="star">Smith, Joanna (August 7, 2010). "Deception used in counselling women against abortion". Toronto Star.</ref>

• quote: ""The Star found volunteers and paid staff at the centres were giving out verbal and written information about the physical and psychological risks of terminating a pregnancy – including breast cancer, emotional trauma and infertility – that either lacked context or has been dismissed by medical experts. ... Here are the three main risks that crisis pregnancy centres visited by the Star claim are associated with abortion. Medical experts have largely dismissed them as myths and exaggerations."
  • does the ref support the statement? No, for two reasons: (1)The quote is reified to medical experts; (2)One weasel word, "largely". It supports a differnt statement:

    However, investigations have routinely found that CPCs disseminate information about the alleged risks of abortion that are largely dismissed by medical experts.

  • is the ref a reliable source? Yes
  • my overall vote: Delete one use --Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mentioning medical experts in no way undermines the statement. If all it said was that there was an increased risk of cancer and infertility, it would be due synthesis on our part to note that this have been referred to by many reliable sources as medically false.

Bits:

A woman who has an abortion, she says, puts herself at great risk of developing breast cancer. Terminating a pregnancy is far more dangerous than carrying a baby to term. And she might never be able to get pregnant again.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Per WP:MEDRS, the fact that an opinion is attributed to medical experts makes it more reliable, not less! Roscelese (talk) 00:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - Talks about the context of this advise without providing it. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I'm sorry to have to point this out again, but the stated reason is demonstrably false. Dylan Flaherty 17:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

naralny

<ref name="naralny">""She said abortion could cause breast cancer": a report on the lies, manipulations and privacy violations of crisis pregnancy centers in New York City" (PDF). NARAL Pro-Choice New York; National Institute for Reproductive Health. October 2010. Retrieved 2010-12-06.</ref>

• quote: "While the majority of surveyed websites simply encouraged potential clients to come in for an appointment to “get the facts” about the procedure, the CPCs that did mention abortion on their websites provided medically inaccurate information: approximately 13% claimed abortion was linked to breast cancer and future infertility, and 25% warned it could cause “post-abortion syndrome” and other health complications.
  • does the ref support the statement? Yes
  • is the ref a reliable source? No because self-published
  • my overall vote: Delete--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

NARAL is a reliable source, though obviously not a neutral one, and it is heavily footnoted. If we removed NARAL, we would have to likewise remove Care Net, NIFLA and so on, until we have no article left.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:45, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. I might vote differently if it were the only reference used to support that statement, due to WP:NPOV rules, but here it just substantiates a bunch of journalistic sources. Roscelese (talk) 00:54, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - We're taking NARAL's word for things now? You know the quid pro quo that I would be within my rights to ask. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: We already quote Care Net, NIFLA and other pro-life sources, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Dylan Flaherty 17:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

savannah

<ref name="savannah">Goers, Beth (October 23, 2008). ""Pregnant? Worried?"". Connect Savannah.</ref>

• quote: "The main risks the anti-abortion camp focuses on are breast cancer and post-abortion stress syndrome. (The National Cancer Institute refutes any connection between abortion and breast cancer.) ... (Research studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, American Psychologist and Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, have all concluded that post-abortion syndrome does not exist.)"
  • does the ref support the statement? No because the ref does not say directly that anything was inaccurate. It supports a different statement:

    However, investigations have routinely found that CPCs disseminate information about the alleged risks of abortion that are dismissed by National Cancer Institute and research studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, American Psychologist and Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.

  • is the ref a reliable source? No. The bulk of the reference is an opinion piece of a case study: one reporter's experience.
  • my overall vote: Delete --Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I cannot agree with your analysis here, even before looking at the source. The quote is not a generalization, but the reporter's statement about the medically false information she was given, citing the NCI to support the fact that it's false. A reliable source citing a reliable source is... reliable.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Article describes the information the author was given perfectly adequately, noting both that she was given X information and that medical bodies say that X information is not true. The article is in "health," not "opinion." (Note that she was also given false information about condoms, though that would be another section if we wanted to discuss it in the article.) Roscelese (talk) 00:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - this is another rehashing of other outside sources. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I'm sorry to have to point this out again, but the stated reason is demonstrably false. Dylan Flaherty 17:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

five

<ref name="five">"5 news undercover". Five News. Sky News. Retrieved 2010-12-07.</ref>

• • is the ref a reliable source? No. Video is hosted by YouTube and it does not have Channel Five News chrome around it.
  • does the ref support the statement? unknown. Didn't watch.
  • my overall vote: Delete. Suggest someone search around the Sky News site to see if there is a video they publish directly. --Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

If you look carefully, you'll see that it does have the Channel Five chrome, in the form of an overlay near the top left. An overlay in the bottom center identifies Stuart Ramsay, trivially confirmed as the speaker.

It includes a video of an actual visit, and Ramsey's v/o at just short of a minute in says: "medically incorrect, disturbingly graphic and against all guidelines that govern counseling".

I believe it is therefore both supporting and reliable.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:53, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Thanks Dylan for noting the overlays - I think I must have misinterpreted Kev's statement about the lack of chrome, because those overlays are quite clear. This article from The Mirror confirms that the program was filmed by Five News and found that centers give out "incorrect information." We've no reason to doubt the authenticity, and of course the video is painfully clear about the false information. Roscelese (talk) 01:00, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - youtube should never be used as a source and we have no way of knowing the context/actual length of the video. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: The article Roscelese links to shows the context, and YouTube videos of mainstream journalistic broadcasts are reliable sources. Dylan Flaherty 18:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

RH Reality Check

suggest change link to http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/video/reality-check-video-series/crisis-pregnancy-centers suggest change link to http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/video/our-reality-video-series/crisis-pregnancy-centers

• • is the ref a reliable source? No. Self-published source.
  • does the ref support the statement? unknown. Didn't watch.
  • my overall vote: Delete --Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The issue here is reliability. I strongly suspect that it's reliable, but I haven't taken the time to reconfirm.

• Meh Dylan Flaherty 00:00, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Delete - Source adds to little and is of uncertain reliability. Dylan Flaherty 18:09, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. The link you provided isn't to the same video. Here is the same video (bottom one) on Feminist Campus, a project of Feminist Majority Foundation. Video does support statement, if you watch it. Roscelese (talk) 01:17, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks Roscelese for pointing out I got the wrong video. I think http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/video/our-reality-video-series/crisis-pregnancy-centers is the right video hosted by RH Reality Check itself.--Kevinkor2 (talk) 02:50, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, there it is. Thanks. Roscelese (talk) 02:54, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Roscelese, now that you've seen the video, I think it should be clear that it's relevant. But what do you think of its reliability? Dylan Flaherty 17:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I'd seen the video before I cited it! Wouldn't have cited it otherwise. But anyway, I see this as sort of equivalent to Lifesitenews in terms of reliability (quality of actual content aside): both are partisan, neither are particularly notable in the mainstream, but Lifesitenews gets cited to illustrate the "pro-life" position because it's notable among people of that political position. As is RHRealityCheck on the other side, I think. But we have many other sources, if people don't think this one is good. Roscelese (talk) 18:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't argue with that. If our goal was to illustrate the pro-choice position, then this would be somewhat useful. However, these citations are about a purely factual matter; the medical claims typically made by CPCs are objectively false (per WP:RSMED). For this purpose, any partisan sources of marginal or low quality should be omitted. I'm going to change my vote to "delete". Dylan Flaherty 18:09, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - No particular reason to keep. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland

<ref>Kleder, Melissa; S. Malia Richmond-Crum (January 14, 2008). "The Truth Revealed" (PDF). NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland. Retrieved 2010-12-07.</ref>

• quote: "Reports by Congressional committee staff and the National Abortion Federation found that CPCs provide false or misleading health information in the hope of convincing women not to have abortions."
  • does the ref support the statement? Yes
  • is the ref a reliable source? No. Self-published source.
  • my overall vote: Delete --Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Again, NARAL is reliable though not neutral, and this document is heavily footnoted.

• Keep Dylan Flaherty 23:59, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Same reason as for the other NARAL source - wouldn't be allowable on its own because of NPOV, but here it's substantiating newspaper sources. Roscelese (talk) 01:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete - NARAL should never be used as a source. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment: This extreme statement is in direct violation of WP:RS. Dylan Flaherty 18:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Miami Times

"Pregnancy centers overstate abortion risks". Vol. 83, no. 45. Miami Times. July 26-August 1, 2006. p. 9B. Care Net, an umbrella group for evangelical pregnancy centers across the United States, instructs affiliates to tell callers there is a possibility that abortion can lead to greater risk of breast cancer, according to Molly Ford, an official with the organization. She said there have been several studies that say it does and several that say it doesn't. A 2003 National Cancer Institute workshop, however, concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer, the AP reported. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• • does the ref support the statement? Yes
  • is the ref a reliable source? Yes (AllRefer website may not be, but it's reproducing an article from a newspaper; I myself read this article in a newspaper database)
• Keep. Roscelese (talk) 01:44, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Keep, as it's exactly on topic, and reliable. Dylan Flaherty 01:45, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Which references should be kept for this one lede sentence?

• I suggest "Waxman" and "austin".--Kevinkor2 (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Er, Kev, I've already addressed above your contentions that the sources cited do not support the statement. I provided specific quotes from the sources that indicated that they told visitors that abortion caused cancer, infection, suicide, and whatnot. If your argument is that the source has to actually say that the information is false, rather than saying "the center said X" when X is false, then say so rather than copy-pasting, please. (Although some of the sources do say the information is false, or otherwise refuted by major health organizations.) I also noted that, although the video is not hosted on a Five News channel on Youtube, we have independent confirmation that there was a Five News investigation which found the same things the video found. Care to revise your comment in light of these things? Roscelese (talk) 23:16, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Without disputing what you said, I think that breaking it down this way was very useful, and the end result is that we've documented the reliability and relevance of each source. Dylan Flaherty 00:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point. Roscelese (talk) 01:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I could take 15 sources onto every statement but doing so is highly confusing and unproductive. Is there any reason to have 15 for one sentence in the lead (which usually goes unsourced)? Let pick the top 4 and leave it be. - Schrandit (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

possible source from Family Research Council

Hi,

I saw an interesting annual report from Family Research Council: https://www.frc.org/DL/14-DEC-10__EF09I54_E7E95B9A-FC67-49CE-988A024EDF989838.pdf

Now, I know that FRC has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. <ref>http://splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/the-hard-liners#</ref><ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112407042.html</ref> However, I think that some of the graphs in the report might be reliable, showing the growth of the major CPC networks over time.

--Kevinkor2 (talk) 02:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

While their reliability for certain kinds of statements -- medical claims come to mind -- is known to be low, they're still a very useful source. For example, I was able to confirm that the average CPC sees fewer people a day than the average doctor, but page 22 confirms that the average CPC sees less than one patient a day. This is good stuff. Dylan Flaherty 03:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yeah, I think that would be fine. As with all partisan sources, we'd obviously have to be careful about what we cite it in support of and what we draw from it - as we've just discussed, their claim on page 34 that the centers provide "accurate and medically referenced health information about the risks" of abortion is contradicted by over a dozen reliable sources - but graphs and other number-based pieces of information seem totally OK. Roscelese (talk) 03:21, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It helps to recognize where they would have any motive to lie. For example, if they were to misreport the average number of clients per day, we would expect them to increase the number, not decrease it. Therefore, the low figure on page 22 is likely accurate and represents an upper limit. Dylan Flaherty 03:24, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense. We'll probably have to consider each thing individually. Roscelese (talk) 03:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's true. I have confidence in our ability to muddle through this somehow. Dylan Flaherty 03:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Reversion discussion

I don't have any problems with this. The clarification regarding volunteers was good, and the sentence about services does need citations (although, since Schrandit originated it, I'll be glad to let him provide those). My only question is whether, once he provides the citations, the sentence would work better at the beginning or end of the paragraph. What's your thinking? Dylan Flaherty 01:32, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the part about false medical information is the logical thing to immediately follow a generic statement about them giving information. Or do you mean that the adoption referrals etc. should come before the "information related to..."? Because that wouldn't seem to make sense, as all CPCs presumably give information, while not all do other things. (For what it's worth, I moved the other services statement to the end of the paragraph only so that it would be clear what the "citation needed" was referring to - I think it works better there, but don't have strong feelings about it.)

Incidentally, we do have a source to the effect that they sometimes give out baby clothes or something like that. I found it in one of the previously cited sources when I was editing a few days ago, and added the cited statement to the body of the article somewhere. Other things still need citations though. Roscelese (talk) 01:45, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I definitely agree that the mention of false information must come immediately after the list of information they give out. I was talking about the list coming before. Let me paste here for clarity.

CPCs offer peer counseling and may provide adoption referrals, pregnancy testing, STD screening and other services. While they provide women with information related to abortion, pregnancy and childbirth, investigations have routinely found that they disseminate false medical information. (approx 10^14 citations here)

First, the two sentences specifically about medical information are now joined, making them flow together more tightly.

Second, the structure is now general-to-specific. We start off by briefly listing some of the services offered, all of which are more general than providing information.

Keep in mind that, when CPCs do provide information, it's not just through counseling, so we wouldn't want to commit to that. Medical information is often provided through hand-outs, posters, videos and audios. It's also provided in the course of performing medical services.

Let's worry about this after the list is fully cited. Dylan Flaherty 02:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that order makes sense. Roscelese (talk) 02:16, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I took that to mean that you agree with my suggested edit. If not, I apologize for any misunderstanding and would be entirely willing to revert that part of my change. Dylan Flaherty 20:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Schrandit 2010-12-19 changes

a) "about the health risks of abortion" - We have citations regarding other medical errors, including statements about when a urine test should be taken, as well as unsupported claims regarding the health of a fetus. Removed.

b) "Many CPCs also provide" - Changed the order to move more common items up front, and made it clear that the only service guaranteed to be provided is the non-medical counseling.

c) "many require their staff to be Christian" - Restored this fact. Also altered the next sentence to clarify the nature of the statement.

d) "In 2006 a New York abortion-provider" - For reasons stated many times, there is no consensus for inclusion. Do not reinsert. Removed.

e) "(D-CA)" - This is blatently pointy. If anyone wants to know Mr. Waxman's party affiliation or home state, they're free to click. Removed.

f) I did not change the post-abortion/abortion-recovery counseling, but I suspect Roscelese may object to it. Dylan Flaherty 20:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

a. - Do we have it that those things are routine?

b. - The info stayed in, no objection.

c. - This is not so and it is legally problematic to state it as so.

d. - Your objection was a sparse number of sources. I found more sources. Let me know where the goal posts are and I'll meet them.

e. - This is standard practice, there is no reason not to give his party and state. - Schrandit (talk) 22:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

a. Since we have over a dozen sources reporting false information and no sources reporting real information (also, since you can actually go to major CPC websites and see for yourself, but we don't have that in the article right now), I think "routinely" is accurate. I would also be cool with "consistently."

c. Is your problem with "many"? Because Care Net and CAPSS are the largest CPC networks in the USA and Canada, Care Net accounts for over a thousand centers, and other unaffiliated CPCs also make such a requirement. Is your problem with "require"? "You can't work here unless you are Christian" absolutely warrants the word "require." Is your problem with "Christian"? Because you've already given your spiel about how we can't knoooooow they're Christian because Christianity is undefinable, and it was rejected as a stupid argument.

d. No, you haven't. You've still only provided local coverage of one incident in which no fault was found, meaning that inclusion would violate WP:UNDUE.

-- Roscelese (talk) 22:55, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

a. - We have over a dozen sources complaining of untimely urine tests?

c. - I don't care about the term "many". The previous wording was inaccurate to the point of being potentially legally problematic.

d. - I have provided more than local coverage and I accurately summarized the case in a section full of other cases.

f. - Dylan and I both agreed that the post-abortion counseling section should be split. Why do you keep posting it back together? - Schrandit (talk) 22:46, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

a. Hence my addition of "usually but not exclusively."

c. Could you explain in what way it is inaccurate and/or legally problematic? The centers require their staff to be Christian. We know they require their staff to be Christian (not only Christian, but Christian in a specific way) because if they didn't, they wouldn't be Care Net or CAPSS affiliates. (If you want to split off the first sentence, "CPCs do not turn away customers on the basis of religion," into another paragraph, by all means do - I'd love it if your contributions to this article consisted of things other than removing citations that we agreed should remain and restoring things that we agreed should stay out. One-sentence paragraphs are frowned upon, though, so you'd actually have to do a bit of research.)

d. Uh-huh, that's clearly a credible, non-partisan source.

f. Because it's simply not criticism. There is nothing critical about it; it's not critical of CPCs, it's not critical of post-abortion counseling, there is nothing in that sentence that could possibly be construed as belonging in a criticism section. If you have a problem with it in its current location, by all means find somewhere else to put it that makes sense, but this just looks like a desperate attempt to avoid mentioning CPC political activity anywhere near their services. (Also, as Dylan can't speak for himself at the moment, I'm afraid I have to be the one to point out that lack of reversion - particularly when he didn't revert my placement of it either - is very unlike "agreement." Don't lie and say people support you when they don't. It just makes your position look weaker.)

g. Cute picture, but no.

-- Roscelese (talk) 02:44, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

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