Imagine the following situation happens to you, or to a woman close to you.

You’re worried you might be pregnant after a recent scare. You’re waiting until enough time has passed so you can properly take a pregnancy test, and in the interim, you see an advertisement for free pregnancy testing at a local clinic.

Strapped for cash, or just sensibly recognizing what appears to be a good deal, you make an appointment.

Upon arriving, the workers at the center pressure you into thinking you don’t have a choice about your body. They supply you with (medically inaccurate) information that reports a link between abortion and breast cancer, or between abortion and infertility.

The center you went to is called a Crisis Pregnancy Center, and your experience is not an isolated incident.

Sophomore political science major Anna Schwanebeck organized a Week of Action against CPCs at UW-Eau Claire.

The Week of Action began Monday and will continue through Friday with various activities meant to increase student awareness of CPCs.

“Crisis pregnancy centers are organizations that lure women seeking abortion information into their centers, claiming to be neutral,” Schwanebeck said. “Often CPCs don’t even have certified medical staff, but they will provide inaccurate medical information in order to manipulate women into avoiding all types of reproductive health care.”

The anti-choice think tanks tend to appear in areas with a couple of specific features. These suspect areas include poverty-stricken neighborhoods, college towns and anywhere near a Planned Parenthood health center.

The two former areas are attractive locations for CPCs because they are considered the most likely places for unplanned pregnancies to occur. The latter is attractive because, despicably, CPCs hope women will come to their centers while looking for Planned Parenthoods.

As a college town, you might have guessed Eau Claire has a CPC of its own, and that’s true.

One of the local CPCs is called APPLE Pregnancy Care Center, and it’s been allowed to advertise its ‘services’ in the Hibbard display case on the first floor. Students can also be linked to APPLE’s website from Eau Claire’s service learning page.

This is absolutely unacceptable. As an institution, Eau Claire touts knowledge as one of its liberal education learning goals. Why, then, does it subject its students to shameless plugs for CPCs, which so fiercely oppose the free exchange of knowledge?

Even if CPCs themselves are pro-life, lying to women is not a pro-choice or pro-life issue; nor is it a religious issue of any kind. Plainly and simply, access to accurate medical information is a human rights issue — one I hope Eau Claire will stand behind.

University campuses around the country are taking a stark stance on CPCs — telling the centers they are not welcome to advertise on campus so long as they continue to spread medical falsehoods.

Women deserve comprehensive, factual information about their reproductive health. And Eau Claire students deserve to be able to walk down the hallway without being bombarded by advertisements for anti-woman establishments.

To speak out against CPCs, sign Schwanebeck’s petition to rid them from our campus from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday on the first floor of Davies.