In a country with one of the world’s most liberal abortion policies, groups funded by conservative American evangelicals are targeting women with a message familiar in the United States but novel to most Israelis: Abortion is “murder.”
“Pregnancy crisis centers” backed by conservative American evangelicals are becoming more prominent here, aiming to change the conversation around abortion and lay the groundwork for a political movement. Be’ad Chaim, a multimillion-dollar operation that has rapidly expanded in recent years, supplies women with carefully selected, or entirely distorted, facts to make the case against abortion. Pamphlets in Hebrew, English, Russian and Arabic show babies being stabbed in the heart or radiated to death, writhing in pain.