Who's fooling us, you ask? Well, it's a problem bigger and much more heinous than a typical April Fool's joke you'd pull on your friends. And it's a problem that's affecting millions of women around the nation. That problem is the Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) that confuse and misinform women around the country.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers are well-disguised as all-options health centers for pregnant women and girls. They are also often well-funded (and sometimes with taxpayer dollars too). While many of them offer inexpensive or free pregnancy tests, they also prey on unsuspecting, vulnerable women, load them with misinformation and lobby them to become parents using fear tactics.

Young women, students, and women in lower-income communities are the most heavily targeted by these centers, with an abundance of misleading and deceptive "bait and switch" advertisements in university, college and community newspapers. Day in and day out, students on campuses across the nation tell the stories of young people being led into such centers, hopeful that they'll find answers and options. Instead, they find misinformation, deception, and intimidation.

The worst part about it is that students and young women are some of the most vulnerable to these bait and switch tactics, and the negative outcomes to their lives as a result. Young women and students typically have fewer financial resources, fewer health care options, and relative inexperience navigating the health care system. It is for these reasons that they are much more likely to be drawn in by the lies in CPC ads offering free and inexpensive services. Women needing unbiased answers and medical care administered by health professionals walk into these CPCs (often staffed by volunteers with little or no medical expertise) unaware that they are being used as pawns by activists with a political agenda who don't truly value their needs and wants.

Ads published in campus and community newspapers make promises like, "Free confidential services, all-options counseling, abortion information, medical referrals, and free ultrasounds." However, the reality is that many women are denied the services they seek, or they are met with no information, misinformation, referrals to Ob/Gyns who refuse to provide abortion care, and forced ultrasounds. Some CPCs have even gone so far as to present pregnant women with congratulatory "new Mom starter kits" complete with baby clothes, whether or not they have made up their minds to become parents.

Choice USA and NAF have teamed up to support a bill that Senator Menendez is rolling out today called the Stop the Deceptive Advertising in Women Services, to help stop these abuses. Young women and students around the country are waging campaigns in their communities already, hoping to inform others about the misinformation doled out by local CPCs. This April 1st will be known as "We Won't Be Fooled Day." Celebrate with us and call your Senators to ask them to co-sponsor the bill too. And together we can ensure that by April 1, 2009, Crisis Pregnancy Centers won't be fooling anyone anymore.

For far too long, the vision of an inclusive social justice movement has failed to conjure many connections with the basic reproductive health and rights movements in this country. Civil rights organizations have worked with labor rights movements. People's organizations have worked with grassroots campaign organizers. Many of these collaborations have been around specific health and well-being issues, but frequently when the word "reproductive" is uttered, people draw lines in the sand and jump to one side or another.

Fortunately, as a social justice movement and a country, that is beginning to change. We're pleased to say that a lot of that change has been initiated by new, younger leaders who not only care about the environment, but also sexual and gender identity issues. The newest generation of activists are working for labor rights, immigration reform, sustainable development, poverty, race and class divides, human rights AND reproductive health.

At Choice USA, we've assembled a delegation of 35 of these young and visionary leaders from across the country who are attending the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta this week. They see these connections and want to build a stronger movement by working together to support all of our commonalities. We're calling them the Reproductive Justice Youth Ambassadors.

From presenting panels on how economic, environmental, and reproductive justice movements connect, to blogging their opinions and experiences, the RJ Youth Ambassadors will be carving space at the table for innovative ideas, discussion, and collaboration, that will help bring the U.S. Social Forum's motto of "Another World is Possible" to fruition.

One campaign the RJ Youth Ambassadors will be working on is a joint collaboration for Fairness in Flowers. Choice USA and the RJ Youth Ambassadors, partnering with workers rights organizations, grassroots farm workers, environmental health organizations, and global trade groups, are encouraging the largest growers and buyers of cut flowers from South America to improve conditions for their workers. Currently, the mostly-female workforce endures forced pregnancy testing and deadly exposure to miscarriage- and birth defect-causing chemicals. The RJ Youth Ambassadors will also advocate for better clean up of the local environment, which is polluted by the grower's plantations (affecting the women, children, and families living near and working on them), and to increase access to overall healthcare services for the people who work for them.

Hailing from dozens of cities across the United States, the Reproductive Justice Youth Ambassadors truly represent a diverse assembly of young leaders, working for a variety of local, national, and grassroots organizations, campus groups, and issues throughout the social justice movement.

Their task is to ensure that during every session, workshop, and march this week, the voices of young leaders will be heard—guaranteeing that reproductive and sexual health and well-being is represented throughout the Forum. They'll be making the connections to continue working across the lines of single-issues to build a stronger and more cohesive movement. So in future years, at the U.S. and World Social Forums, reproductive justice won't be forgotten and another world will be possible.

You can view profiles of some of Choice USA's Reproductive Justice Youth Ambassadors here. Choice USA staff and activists will be presenting three different panels while at the US Social Forum: For Our Future, For Our Movement: Reproductive Justice for Young People; History of Choice: Future of Justice; and The Birds, Bees, Flowers and Trees: Making Global Connections Between Economic, Environmental, and Reproductive Justice Movements.

Learn more about the workshops here.

Editor’s Note: Each year, Choice USA honors the achievements of young women and men working towards reproductive justice through their “Generation Awards.”

In a time when there are all kinds of awards for all types of achievements, the question ‘why another awards event?' is an honest and timely one. Over the last couple of elections young people have come to be recognized as a viable voting bloc, a constituency to be targeted by electoral campaigns as well as by issue and advocacy groups. However, in 2003, dialogue around young people was often very accusatory, dismissive and at most condescending and paternalistic. Post-Roe vs. Wade, post-civil rights movement, children of the baby boomers and their kids were actively being labeled as lazy, apathetic, unappreciative, ungrateful, complacent and frankly uninterested in the social and political movements in our country and abroad. Those few young people who were seen as exceptions to the rule were donned "Leaders of the Future".

Choice USA's intent in establishing the Generation Awards was to accomplish two things.

First, we desired to show the world that young people in the United States are not only aware and interested in the social and political events that shape our lives and those of our communities around the world, but that we are actively thinking and strategizing about how to make a positive and lasting impact towards social change. And, secondly, that not only are young people the future leaders of global movements for change; but young people in the here and now, domestically and internationally, are leading the fight for access to higher education, to quality comprehensive sex education, to fair labor practices, for corporate responsibility, for the greening of our communities and for true autonomy and freedom to make healthy choices for our bodies and lives.

The Generation Awards is Choice USA's chance to be the megaphone for all of the youth voices crying out for change and creatively making their marks on this often unjust world. Without fail, the young people we have awarded over the years have identified and credited mentors in their lives that gave them the space, development and empowerment to become the leaders they are today. Therefore, in 2005 we created the Mentor of the Year award and in 2006 the Sharing the Legacy award to also give recognition and heap thanks on those who demonstrate our values of shared power, leadership development, intergenerational learning and leading. These awardees model what it means to make a way for young people.

Like the past four years, we hope this year's Generation-to Generation Celebration on May 23, 2007 will inspire young people who are looking for an outlet for their passion, commitment, ideas, and intelligence to get involved. We hope it will reinvigorate the commitment of the awardees to stay involved and continue to pave the way for other young leaders, and lastly we want to illustrate to seasoned and established leaders the value-added when we invest in new leadership and encourage the purposeful and strategic transfer of information and skills.

Tickets for this year's Generation Awards can be purchased here and you can see the full list of the 2007 Awardees here. We hope you'll join us in celebrating these amazing young leaders.