It’s been a big year for our crisis pregnancy center (CPC) accountability work.
As co-author of Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center Industry in Nine States and a follow-up brief outlining how CPCs are poised to function as anti-abortion surveillance dragnets, I spoke to many news outlets and appeared in this excellent 20-minute documentary to discuss the threat CPCs pose to public health and their role in the larger anti-abortion movement.
Our CPC accountability work has been cited in medical literature and local, state, and federal policy efforts to hold CPCs accountable to the public as they continue to funnel public funds intended to help children in poverty into the pockets of anti-abortion activists.
She Thought She Was Scheduling an Abortion
This new Insider story is a good example of why we expanded our focus on this work.
A young Virginia woman named Estefanía googled “abortion pill near me” and then went to The Keim Center in Virginia Beach, the first facility to come up in search results.
She was told not to use her phone. They asked if she wanted to marry her boyfriend and repeatedly referred to the “baby.” Then they said it was too early to have an ultrasound–a service misleadingly advertised as part of “a comprehensive pre-abortion consultation.”
“What is this then?” she said. “If you’re not telling me how to get an abortion, then what am I doing here?”
Designed to Deceive
Estefanía’s confusion and entrapment is an anti-abortion success story: CPCs that misleadingly present as medical facilities seek to intercept pregnant people searching for legitimate healthcare and then delay, deter, and deceive them out of accessing it.
The new Business Insider story exposes many common deceptive CPC tactics outlined in our Alliance Study report, Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Industry in Nine States.
- She thought she was a medical facility that provided abortion care but it was a CPC that, on the companion website meant for donors, says it exists to “spare hearts and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
- The public-facing website, however, misleads about its mission with medical-sounding language: “We specialize in offering you a comprehensive pre-abortion consultation so you can make a confident, fully informed decision.”
- The ultrasound Estefanía sought as “pre-abortion counseling” likely had no legitimate medical purpose.
- They falsely told her that abortion causes breast cancer, which is a lie.
- The CPC website dangerously dissuades pregnant people from seeking medical care by suggesting they might have an ectopic pregnancy “and due to these potential complications, you may not need to have an abortion.” Untreated ectopic pregnancies can be fatal.
Estefania’s experience is why we expanded our CPC industry accountability work. This industry is operating with woefully inadequate oversight, despite increasingly depending on government funds. With abortion severely restricted or outright banned in at least a dozen states and maternity care deserts all over the country, CPCs pose a bigger threat than ever to people in need of legitimate medical care. Every delay is a danger.
Thank you for your support. We couldn’t do this work without you.
Sincerely,
Tara, WLP Director of Strategic Communications
Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond. We are a non-profit organization!
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