by Lauren Ashley deLancey, ROCDSA Socialist Feminist Collective

The Socialist Feminist Collective is a group of Rochester, NY Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members organizing around reproductive freedom, economic justice and other feminist issues that especially impact the working class and the poor. We’re proud to have organized several Bowl-A-Thons with NYAAF and are always happy to support an abortion fund that does such incredible work in the state. 

Inspired by our socialist feminist comrades in Pittsburgh DSA, we spent much of 2020 preparing to launch a campaign against Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), sometimes called Pregnancy Resource Centers, in Rochester.

Our goal is to expose CPCs for what they are: fake abortion clinics with an agenda that don’t provide the legitimate reproductive health care that all people deserve. We’re giving the Rochester community the tools to recognize when they’re interacting with a CPC and the resources they’ll need to visit abortion clinics and legitimate reproductive health care providers instead. And as socialists, it is important to us to provide resources to poor pregnant people, including information about how to access abortion funding in Rochester through our friends at NYAAF and where to go for material aid like food, clothing, and baby supplies. 

We’re kicking off this campaign in the new year with a social media push to collect stories about experiences and the release of our new printed brochure about CPCs. If you are a person who sought reproductive healthcare but ended up at a CPC, tell your story! You can submit anonymously through this form, and we may use your experiences on social media or in printed materials. 

Want to learn more? Follow us at @rocsocfem on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and email us with questions, concerns, or ideas at rocsocfem@gmail.com.