A new development in the conservative fight against abortion rights is something called a crisis pregnancy center (CPC), and it’s rearing its strange and ugly head in cities around the country. What’s more, many of these centers have focused specifically on the pregnancies of women of color, whose wombs, you might remember, have been in the public eye for the past several weeks.

Hard on the heels of a controversial billboard in New York City proclaiming that “the most dangerous place” for Black children is their mother’s womb, South Dakota has passed a new law that increases the waiting period for an abortion from one day to three days and forces women who’ve decided to get an abortion to go to a CPC.

Though the name Crisis Pregnancy Center is vague, critics say it’s very clear what the centers are designed to do: talk women out of having abortions.

The religious affiliation of one CPC, Christian Alpha Center of Sioux Falls in South Dakota, immediately calls into question the center's ability to give advice about a procedure like abortion. The organization doesn't offer medical services (prenatal care and ultrasounds, for example). What it will do, however, is force women who have already decided to have an abortion to listen to lectures about secondary virginity and the side effects of the procedure. In other words, its staff will terrorize women until they renege on their decision to terminate their pregnancies.

Care Net, another Christian-based CPC, plans to set up shop in Washington, D.C. The CPC says it's “strategically planting new pregnancy centers in these urban communities in order to provide needed abortion alternatives and pregnancy support services.”

Care Net says its main desire is to “serve” African-Americans and Latinas.

If these people are friends to the Black community, we’d hate to see our foes.

(Photo Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)