Students for Choice Will Picket Pregnancy Clinic

A pro-abortion rights student group will picket outside the Daybreak Crisis Pregnancy Center today to protest the clinic's counselling about abortion, students said.

Members of Students for Choice said yesterday they expect between 50 and 100 students to join their demonstration against the counselling clinic, which is located in Harvard Square. They said they were protesting because the center gives misleading medical information in an effort to keep pregnant women from having abortions.

"The Daybreak clinic advertises as a pregnancy counseling center but actually when a woman goes in there she's confronted with anti-abortion propaganda--false medical things such as abortion causes sterility," said Mona Karim '93, a Students for Choice member. "There are no frozen embryos or anything--they just try to intimidate with words."

"The women are told that abortion causes sterility and breast cancer and they're also told in a 'kind and gentle' way not to kill their unborn child," said Andrew Sabl '90, one of the protest organizers.

Daybreak's director, however, said the clinic does not present its patients with false medical information.

"I'm not familiar with any ties that abortion has to cancer," said Lynn Bisby, the director. "We do talk about the risks of abortion--the risk of hemorrhaging, slight risk of tearing the cervix and the potential risk for emotional side effects. There's a certain percentage of women who suffer emotional backlash such as guilt or depression."

"We like to present women with all of the options--carrying the pregnancy, abortion and adoption," Bisby added. "We feel that abortion is an option that affects the women as well as the fetus. It's an end to life, but we don't use any terms like murder or kill [because] we feel that would be harrassment."

Members of Students for Choice said they hoped the protest would inform the Cambridge and Harvard communities about what the clinic is doing. They said they would not try to physically disrupt the center's operations.

"It would be lovely if we could close the place down but we won't do anything other than picketing," said Julia L. Shaffner '91, coordinator of Students for Choice. "They do have the right to exist and that's not our goal. We want to inform people."

Students for Choice members said they decided to picket after one of their members. Ann Sydor, posed as a patient to see how the clinic counsels pregnant women. Sydor, a Harvard graduate student, was strongly advised against having an abortion, Students for Choice members said.

Earlier this year, the Coalition to Defend Abortion Rights held a similar demonstration against Daybreak in the Square.