Unidentified Nurse: And that's the baby's head, and this is the spine.
LUCKY SEVERSON: This is Tina Minshall's fourth sonogram at the Women's Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
TINA MINSHALL (Patient, Women's Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida): I've had several here because there's times when I wonder and doubt. You know, did I make the right decision? Am I making the right decision?
Unidentified Nurse: You can see the heart. This is the heart -- valves opening and closing.
SEVERSON: Now when she sees the sign of life in her belly, she knows she made the right decision not to have an abortion. The first sonogram was the turning point.
(to Ms. Minshall): What did you see in that ultrasound?
Ms. MINSHALL: A little bitty thing, it looks like a kidney bean. But it has a little heartbeat. And that's mine. That's a life. That's mine -- I made that.SEVERSON: Pregnancy centers are usually free. Women often come to these places thinking they can get an abortion, but that's the last thing they'll find.
Colleen Garson, director of the Women's Clinic, says the mission here is to prevent abortions.
COLLEEN GARSON (Director, Women's Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida): It does have a religious undertone. We were started by a religious group.
SEVERSON: Her clinic is funded in part by the Catholic Church, and last year she counseled almost 1,800 girls.
Ms. GARSON: If they call and they ask, you know, "Do you do abortions here?" I will say, "No, we don't." I will not, you know, try to drag it out. I'll just say, "No, we don't do it. But I have information for you."SEVERSON: Her information is about the health and psychological risks of abortion, but the biggest news is that the woman can look at a free sonogram of her tiny fetus. Some clinics even offer three-dimensional sonograms with life-like images, although the machines are still too expensive for most clinics. But the costs are often underwritten by religious organizations, including Catholics and Southern Baptists.
In many communities, these centers now outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics, and Karen Pearl, executive director of Planned Parenthood, says they often do more harm than good.
KAREN PEARL (Executive Director, Planned Parenthood): They pretend to be centers that women think when they go in there will be providing unbiased information. They're not providing good women's care. They're actually not providing women with the information that they need. They're lying to women. They're deceiving women. They're manipulating women.SEVERSON: Young women we spoke with, like Sheila Valdomar at the Jacksonville clinic, said they did not feel coerced into keeping their baby.
Sheila was 16. Her mother had told her she would kick her out of the house if she got pregnant.
(to Sheila Valdomar): So when you found out you were pregnant, what went through your mind?
SHEILA VALDOMAR (Patient, Women's Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida): I was just scared.
SEVERSON: So Sheila called the Jacksonville Women's Clinic.
(to Ms. Valdomar): Why did you call this place?
Ms. VALDOMAR: I wanted to know how much an abortion was. I really did. I know six people off the top of my head who have had them. A lot of my friends were telling me, "Oh, just get it done. Hurry, quick. You know, don't even think about it."SEVERSON (to Ms. Valdomar): So you thought this was an abortion clinic?
Ms. VALDOMAR: Yeah, kind of, yeah.
SEVERSON: When Sheila called the clinic, Colleen answered.
Ms. VALDOMAR: She started telling me what could happen to me if I had an abortion.
SEVERSON: If you had an abortion it might ...
(simultaneously) Ms. VALDOMAR: ... increase your chance of breast cancer.
SEVERSON: My understanding was that doctors now say that's not true.
Ms. GARSON: Well, that's what we -- that's what the -- all of the information had come to us that it did.
Ms. PEARL: That's been shown not to be true in study after study after study. And that's a rumor that goes around. But it is simply not true.
SEVERSON: Critics say these pregnancy clinics offer only information that suits their ideology or misleading information -- that they literally scare young women out of getting abortions.Karen Pearl says unlike the so-called pregnancy clinics, Planned Parenthood counsels women on all their options, not just one.
SEVERSON: But in the end, Sheila didn't have an abortion. She had Kayleen Rosales, now eight months old.
JUDY TIMBY (Retired Nurse): We're having a lot of success because the girls are taught in school that this is a blob of tissue -- and if they can see that little heartbeat.
Ms. PEARL: If a woman wants to see a sonogram, we would make that available to her. But that's her choice. That's not part of the coercive care that's given to force a decision, to put people down a particular path. Women have three options when they're facing a pregnancy. They can continue and deliver and choose to parent that child. They can continue and deliver and use adoption services. Or they can terminate the pregnancy and have an abortion. At Planned Parenthood we don't have a value on any one of those.
SEVERSON: Sheila and Kayleen are the only proof needed at the clinic that they're doing God's work. That's why religious organizations plan to fund even more pregnancy clinics with sonograms.
