A group of clergy and anti-abortion activists from across the city are planning to open up pro-life centers in neighborhoods with high rates of abortions.
The Leadership Coalition is slated to open the New Beginnings Center of Hope in Jamaica, Queens, by the end of the year. It will offer counseling, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and adoption referrals.
The group plans to open a similar pregnancy support center in Harlem in 2013.
“What we want to say is, ‘Hey, when you’re faced with this decision, call us. We can give you a full range of options,’” said the Rev. Michel Faulkner, head of the New Horizon Church in Harlem. And “the option of abortion is still on the table.”
The group discussed the centers at its meeting last month, said Faulkner, a former Jets lineman.
He cited data from the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a group that funds pro-life and religious freedom projects, that suggests there were more abortions than live births in some southeast Queens and upper Manhattan ZIP codes.
Low-income neighborhoods with large minority populations were prone to have high abortion rates, according to the group.
“The rate of abortion is extremely high in New York City,” said the foundation’s executive director, Greg Pfundstein.
The Leadership Coalition isn’t the only group planning to open pro-life centers in Queens.
Expectant Mother Care-EMC FrontLine Pregnancy Centers is slated two open two facilities this summer, one in Long Island City and one in Richmond Hill. The Christian pro-life group already has a center in Jackson Heights as well as one on the upper East Side.
EMC President Chris Slattery said he believes “expansion is necessary throughout the city” to compete with abortion providers promoting themselves heavily.
His group regularly pickets outside of Jamaica’s newest abortion provider, Choices Women’s Medical Center. The facility also provides gynecological, counseling and pre-natal services.
Choices CEO Merle Hoffman, a pioneering abortion-rights advocate, said pro-life centers typically don’t provide women with a clear sense of all of their options — and will scare women thinking of terminating their pregnancies.
She also pointed out that the counselors at the centers aren’t always licensed social workers.
“It’s misrepresentative advertising because they call themselves crisis pregnancy counseling to discuss options,” Hoffman said. “And then the option of abortion is not discussed either realistically or as an option.”
ctrapasso@nydailynews.com
