In today's consumer advocacy news, Bayview/Hunter's Point supervisor Malia Cohen is baring her teeth to go after misleading information from crisis pregnancy centers like First Resort or Alpha Pregnancy Center in San Francisco. The problem, according to a Saturday piece in the Chronicle, is that the centers often advertise counseling and medical care for women without actually offering anything more than an anti-abortion spiel.

Cohen's legislation, currently being written with a little help from City Attorney and cuddly mayoral hopeful Dennis Herrera, takes cues from similar laws in Austin and New York where facilities are required to post signs detailing which services they actually provide and whether or not a licensed physician is actually on staff. The bottom line according to Cohen, Herrera and professional sources from UCSF is that any center claiming to offer comprehensive coverage without a full range of options is "a stunning exaggeration."

While the Alpha Pregnancy Center in the Excelsior seems on board with the proposed legislation (they currently require clients to sign a waiver recognizing the center has no medical license and that their counseling is informed by the Bible), an Executive Director from First Resort didn't think the nonprofit's stance against abortion affected the bias of their counseling. Of course, they didn't have much insight to offer about why they tucked their facility in to 450 Sutter Street, one of the city's largest medical office buildings, under a lobby directory heading: "OB/GYN".

[Chron]