Sell the clothes on social media and donate the money?
I live in a small and highly religious town. I’m ready to pass along clothing and gear from our two children, but I feel limited by the organizations that accept used children’s goods here: a secondhand store that resells items cheaply and a crisis pregnancy center, where they attempt to deceive and discourage women from having abortions. The pregnancy center is a big part of our community, and I know many moms who have used its services and donated supplies. Can I donate supplies to the center and tell myself that I’m supporting women who already have children, or would I still be supporting the center’s anti-choice efforts? (I can imagine the rooms of cute baby clothes are used to dissuade women from considering abortion.) Should I take my gear to the secondhand store? If I do donate to the pregnancy center, how can I avoid becoming enraged whenever I go there? For what it’s worth, I contacted a domestic violence organization one town over, but it had no suggestions for alternative options.
—Where to Go From Here?
Re: Sell the clothes on social media and donate the money?
Find the best place that makes the greatest amount of sense.
FWIW, I'd try and find a liberal church or a local FB group or homeless shelter and see if they could use it or the second hand shop. There's no way I'd give it to the "pregnancy crisis shelter", b/c I'm heartily against those "crisis centers" for a multitude of reasons.
Some are more nefarious than others; the worst will advertise and tell women they provide abortions but don't, many will do an ultrasound and lie about how far along a woman is so she will believe she can't have an abortion, others will tell women they provide abortions and schedule multiple appointments over a number a weeks so that a woman who may be close to the state gestational age limit will have to wait for an appointment and then by the time the "procedure" appointment is set it's actually too late for her to have an abortion. Many provide outright lies about risks and complications of abortion. Others promise support throughout the pregnancy and after the baby is born.
Not all are this bad; some will come right out and say they don't make abortion referrals or give abortion information.
I sort of don't understand the letter?
Is her angst that she would prefer to donate the clothes to a worthy cause and does not feel the pregnancy center is a worthy cause (and rightly so)?
Assuming that, she's really making this hard when it doesn't need to be.
@charlotte989875 and @levioosa, the info in y'all's posts are making me sad and angry. I was not aware that such slices of evil existed. Pushing an organization's political agenda onto women who might be confused, scared, and unsure. Women who had turned to them for "help" and "information".
I'm even good with a "Women's Center" that is transparent about their motives and doesn't lie.
ETA: Also worth noting and rage-inducing: most of the changes the GOP has tried to implement around removing or restricting insurance coverage & funding at Planned Parenthood would keep funding going to these crapholes, or direct more money there. Because of course.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02/12/google-points-abortion-seekers-toward-anti-abortion-clinics/
“The organization’s [RealOptions] CEO Valerie Hill acknowledged in an interview Tuesday that RealOptions pays Google for keywords including “abortion” and “pregnancy” and “unplanned pregnancy.” Purchased keywords call up ads when users search those words.”
This caveat was included with the article by Naral.
“Some abortion providers have to go into Google Maps regularly and re-submit their hours, because anti-choice fake women’s health centers will submit online that legitimate clinics are closed for good.”
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but one of the things that drives me NUTS about the conservative Christian right...is they freak out and care SO MUCH about unborn, unwanted fetuses. But the minute that baby is born and is a little human breathing on its own, it's f**k that baby. Cut/eliminate all the social programs. Let it starve. Let it be homeless. Let it die from illness. Where did all of that "love" and "caring" go?
I don't believe in unscrupulous tactics or trickery to get people to have babies, want all babies born to be cared for and here's a crazy idea - I don't want to bury my kids because someone armed with a weapon reserved for military and law enforcement (and never for hunting) used it to shoot my kids in the classroom.
This isn't that hard and yet for some reason we can't figure it out.
Are you trying to take away my God-given and Constitutional right to bear arms//s?
On a completely different topic I was talking to Chiquita yesterday because she asked about how people can get cancer. We talked about how some cancers we just don't know why we get them but for others, we try to be healthy and not do things that can increase our risk of getting some cancers and it's among the reasons why neither I nor my DH smoke.
Talked a bit about what it means to smoke a cigarette, what they do to the lungs and how there's basically no redeeming quality to their existence. And then she did it. She asked, "Then why are they LEGAL?!?!?"
Good question kid. Let's just keep making them more expensive.
Personally, I have a couple of free FB sites that have moms that are needy that I give baby/kid stuff to. I would rather do this.