BUFFALO – A New York pregnancy center has become the first facility in the U.S. to offer both birthing services and abortions in the same building.

The Birthing Center of Buffalo is a new health facility that opened its doors last month. According to reports, the center is the first of its kind, offering both birthing services and abortion procedures.

“We are so proud to offer a full spectrum of reproductive services,” the birthing center staff shared in a November Facebook post. “Not to toot our own horn, but within the next few weeks we will become the first combination birth center and abortion clinic in the country!”

The Birthing Center of Buffalo is operated by Buffalo Womenservices—a pro-abortion agency which regularly condemns pro-life measures and organized a “40 days of prayer to keep abortion safe and legal” campaign last year. The facility now offers first and second trimester abortions up to 22 weeks gestation.

Buffalo Womenservices’ web site warns clients of pro-life protesters who might attempt to change women’s minds about abortion.

“Unfortunately, there may be some protesters in front of our facility, but they are not allowed past the front of the building or on clinic property,” the Web site states. “Please avoid communicating with the protesters.”

Dr. Katherine Morrison, the obstetrician-gynecologist who heads Buffalo Womenservices, believes abortion procedures should be offered hand-in-hand with traditional birthing services.

“I see a connection between respecting a woman’s right to decide to end a pregnancy and her right to determine how she has her baby,” Morrison told local reporters.

“Both of these experiences—abortion and birth—can exist in a woman’s reproductive life,” she added. “Many mothers have had abortions or will have one.”

Pro-abortion activists herald the new facility as a victory for their cause. Last week, the liberal opinion Web site Slate praised the center’s “explicitly feminist point of view.”

“Having a single place to go for all your pregnancy needs instead of sorting patients out depending on their preconceptions about outcome is just plain common sense,” a Slate columnist suggested. “Being able to go to the same doctor to give birth and have an abortion at different times in your life is likely comforting for patients.”

“This Buffalo clinic, then, is a major step in the right direction,” the columnist continued. “… The same doctor who is performing abortions is also delivering babies. There’s no contradiction there.”

However, pro-life advocates describe The Birthing Center of Buffalo as “a terrible irony.”

“Babies will be welcomed into life in one room and, down the hall, their lives will be snuffed out in abortions,” Steven Ertelt wrote for LifeNews.

Ertelt also noted the health risks associated with abortion procedures.

“In the past few years, an ever-increasing number of studies have demonstrated that elective abortions in the first and second trimester are associated with an increased risk of subsequent spontaneous pre-term birth,” he wrote. “A 2012 study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which looked at 26 years of birth data, showed that a single induced abortion increased a woman’s risk of having a premature baby by 37%.”

Stasia Zoladz Vogel, president of the Buffalo Regional Right to Life Committee, also condemned the new facility in Buffalo.

“It’s absolutely ludicrous that those who specialize in taking life claim they are qualified to help women give birth,” she told reporters. “For anyone to entrust the birth of their child to a business that specializes in ending the life of infants in the womb is foolhardy at best and dangerous at worst.”

Photo: Facebook

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