Pregnancy Resource Centers of Greater Portland, Oregon

Community in Need

Our Community in Crisis
Abortions in Portland
U.S. Teen Sexual Activity Statistics
Decision-Making in a Culture of Deception
Stark facts reveal the impact of abortion on women

Our Community in Crisis
For decades, a deceptive movement has undercut our community. Women have been taught that abortion is a quiet, easy answer without consequences. This deception could not be farther from the truth, and is reflected in the fact that many lives are terminated by abortion every day in our area. We need to break the painful cycle of abortion among women in the greater Portland area.

Abortions in Portland:

Nearly 9,000 abortions will be performed in Tri-County Portland this year.
With the proliferation of RU-486, the Morning After Pill, Emergency Contraception, and the home pregnancy test, it is rapidly becoming difficult to know the truth about abortion rates. This suggests a need for updated strategies for reaching abortion-minded and abortion-vulnerable people with the truth about all abortion procedures and alternatives.
43% of women of age have had an abortion from age 15-55.

U.S. Teen Sexual Activity Statistics
(High School Seniors) 2005/06

70% of women who have an abortion call themselves Christians.
Ever engaged in sexual intercourse
Total: 63.1%, Males: 48%, Females: 45.3%
Currently sexually active
Total: 49.4%

Decision-Making in a Culture of Deception
National and Portland-based media, through distorted facts and innuendo, leave women and men facing life and death decisions confused and deceived. Most people trying to make a decision about abortion lack the full truth. The result is ongoing pressure to abort babies.

The culture of deception runs deep in Portland:

Abortion has been legal since before most decision-makers were born.
“Safe sex” has been promised with use of the right contraceptives (in spite of the dangers) through school health classes, advertising, and public relations campaigns.
Most popular TV shows and movies present sex as though there are no long-term consequences to multiple sexual partners.
Co-habitation, adultery and promiscuity are touted as the “norm.”
The assumption often presented is that abortion is the “obvious” choice.
There are deceptive and inaccurate communications produced and distributed by certain organizations, leaving out key facts about the unborn and abortion, and portraying PRCs as scary places where one can expect to be “manipulated” into a “bad” decision.

In Portland, many pregnant women still go to clinics that provide “selective” scientific information about unborn children and minimize information about the personal devastation resulting from abortion. In addition,these clinics are serving children without parental knowledge. How will abortion-vulnerable people know there is a better alternative? How will they transition from a belief that they need to abort for “self defense,” to seeing the possibilities for their unborn baby?

Most people facing an unplanned pregnancy have not personally heard from a woman or man who has already faced the choice, had an abortion, AND will speak transparently about this destructive decision in their life. PRC is working to encourage those who have had abortions to seek healing and to unleash their voice in the community.

Walking Wounded

Stark facts reveal the impact of abortion on women:

Approximately sixty percent (60%) of women who experience post-abortion separation report suicidal tendencies. twenty eight percent (28%) of these women actually attempted suicide, while half of them attempted it two or more times.
The risk of breast cancer almost doubles after one abortion, and rises even further with two or more abortions. (Note: the AMA took more than 60 years after scientific research proved tobacco use contributed to lung cancer, before they "admitted" it. Numerous scientific studies and several medical organizations already acknowledge the abortion cancer link.)
Teenagers, who account for about thirty percent (30%) of all abortions, are at a much higher risk of suffering many abortion related complications. This is true of both immediate complications and of long-term reproductive damage.
More statistics can be found at www.afterabortion.org

Abortions have been performed on roughly on 180,000 in Tri-County Portland. There are thousands of women in Portland who have had an abortion at some time in their life…likewise, the men who are pivotal in abortion decisions should not be overlooked.

Most of the women who have had abortions have never received meaningful counsel, and they continue on in denial and silent suffering. Many respond to these feelings about their abortion by becoming a voice for the pro-abortion movement…reinforcing their own decision, and perpetuating the myth that abortion poses no risk to women.