Men’s Catholic order gave secret millions to ‘deceptive’ anti-abortion centres

Revealed: Tax filings show Knights of Columbus ploughed at least $10.8m into ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ in six years

Open Democracy – by Diana Cariboni, Angelina De Los Santos, Mónica Cordero
14 February 2024

A multi-billion-dollar all-male Catholic order in the US has handed at least $10.8m to hundreds of anti-abortion centres in six years, openDemocracy can reveal – several times what was previously known.

Founded in the 19th century to assist Irish widows and orphans in the US, the Knights of Columbus – named after Christopher Columbus – funded at least 485 of the 2,500 so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ in America between 2017 and 2022, our analysis of hundreds of documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) found. The order claims to have two million members.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/knights-of-columbus-crisis-pregnancy-centres-anti-abortion-us-daf/

Anti-abortion centers raked in $1.4bn in year Roe fell, including federal money

Exclusive: memo shows anti-abortion pregnancy centers received at least $344m in government money in 2022

Carter Sherman
Wed 14 Feb 2024

Anti-abortion facilities raked in at least $1.4bn in revenue in the 2022 fiscal year, the year Roe v Wade fell – a staggering haul that includes at least $344m in government money, according to a memo analyzing the centers’ tax documents that was compiled by a pro-abortion rights group and shared exclusively with the Guardian.

These facilities, frequently known as anti-abortion pregnancy centers or crisis pregnancy centers, aim to convince people to keep their pregnancies. But in the aftermath of Roe’s demise, the anti-abortion movement has framed anti-abortion pregnancy centers as a key source of aid for desperate women who have lost the legal right to end their pregnancies and been left with little choice but to give birth.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/14/anti-abortion-centers-funding

USA – Anti-Abortion Centers Spent Over $600M in One Year. That’s the Tip of the Iceberg.

Documents reviewed by Rewire News Group suggest the total may have been closer $1 billion. Where is all that "crisis pregnancy center" money going?

AUG 30, 2023
GARNET HENDERSON, Rewire News Group

“Crisis pregnancy centers,” or anti-abortion centers, are known for deceiving and manipulating people seeking information about abortion. They often pose as legitimate abortion clinics, intentionally obscuring their real purpose. They promote dangerous medical misinformation such as abortion pill “reversal.” They also discourage safer sex practices, and because few of them are actual medical facilities, they don’t adhere to medical standards for confidentiality and safety.

For example, a Massachusetts woman sued a CPC in June for failing to diagnose her ectopic pregnancy, which resulted in an emergency surgery and the loss of her fallopian tube. Months earlier, a Kentucky nurse came forward to reveal that a CPC where she had volunteered was failing to properly sterilize its transvaginal ultrasound equipment.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2023/08/30/anti-abortion-centers-spent-over-600m-in-one-year-thats-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

‘It’s a public health risk’: nurse decries infection control at US anti-abortion crisis center

A Kentucky nurse tried to hold a pregnancy center accountable for the problems she saw – but such facilities are subject to little regulation

Laura C Morel
Thu 2 Feb 2023

At 52, Susan Rames was looking for a way to give back. She worked part-time at a Kentucky hospital as a postpartum nurse and, with her three children nearly grown, she had some extra time during the week.

Motivated by her Christian faith, Rames decided to volunteer at ALC Pregnancy Resource Center, a crisis pregnancy center whose mission is to discourage people from seeking abortions.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/02/kentucky-crisis-pregnancy-center-anti-abortion-malpractices

USA – Anti-abortion pregnancy centers are deceiving patients – and getting away with it

One Florida case shows just how little authorities are doing to hold pregnancy centers accountable, even when the risks to women – and evidence – are significant

Laura C Morel for Reveal
Thu 15 Dec 2022

Patricia Henderson stood in the parking lot next to the Florida Women’s center in Jacksonville, wearing a white lab coat and greeting patients as they emerged from their cars. Their abortion appointments, she told them, were in the flat-roofed building across the road.

Once inside, Henderson handed them three pages of paperwork to fill out – questions about everything from their highest level of education to the date of their last period. State investigative documents lay out what clients say happened next: she led them to a pink-walled ultrasound room, where she would reveal their pregnancies in grainy images that, according to leading medical groups, only a licensed physician or a specially trained advanced practice nurse should interpret.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/15/us-anti-abortion-pregnancy-centers

USA – A woman who mistakenly visited an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center said she was met with pushback for seeking an abortion

'I just was not ready, and words can't make you ready for that'

Hannah Getahun, Isabella Zavarise, and Katie Nixdorf
Dec 5, 2022

Estefanía thought she was making an appointment to get an abortion.

Fearing she might be pregnant after a missed period, she typed "abortion pill near me" into Google and went to the first clinic that came up on the web page. When she got to The Keim Center in Virginia Beach, it didn't look or smell like a medical clinic — it was too nice, too inviting.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/crisis-pregnancy-centers-target-women-seeking-abortions-with-misinformation-pushback-2022-11

USA – As abortion access shrinks in the South, tax dollars flow to fake clinics

By Elisha Brown
October 14, 2022

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in June, at least 66 clinics in 15 states have stopped offering abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and policy organization. In the South, 22 clinics have closed across eight states.

As options for abortion care shrink, pregnant people may encounter so-called "crisis pregnancy centers," or CPCs: anti-abortion organizations that have proliferated in recent years.

Continued: https://www.facingsouth.org/states-funding-anti-abortion-crisis-pregnancy-centers

This Is What It Was Like to Be an Abortion Escort Before Roe Ended

A volunteer and a legal scholar take you into a job that is about to become much more dangerous.

a. l. Dawson and J. Shoshanna Ehrlich
June 30, 2022

All across the country, with its wildly uneven distribution of reproductive health services, anti-abortion protesters continue to wage a war of attrition against abortion access—often transforming the public spaces in front of clinics into hostile zones that clients must navigate in order to access essential care.

It will only get harder now that the Supreme Court has gutted Roe with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While abortion access has become increasingly difficult in recent years, particularly for marginalized communities in abortion-hostile regions, we will soon face the grim reality that abortion most likely will be banned in at least 25 states. (Oklahoma didn’t even bother to wait for the Supreme Court to institute such a ban, which the governor signed at the end of May.) At the same time, abortion clinics that still remain are anticipating more protests by emboldened and potentially more aggressive anti-abortion activists who are seeking to transform the nation into a unified abortion wasteland.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/06/this-is-what-it-was-like-to-be-an-abortion-escort-before-roe-ended/

‘Fetal heartbeat’ in abortion laws taps emotion, not science

Ohio maternal fetal medicine specialist Dr. Michael Cackovic says Republican-backed laws banning abortions at what they term the “first detectable fetal heartbeat" defy science

By JULIE CARR SMYTH and KIMBERLEE KRUESI, Associated Press
14 May 2021

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Dr. Michael Cackovic has treated his share of pregnant women. So when Republican lawmakers across the U.S. began passing bans on abortion at what they term “the first detectable fetal heartbeat,” he was exasperated.

That's because at the point where advanced technology can detect that first flutter, as early as six weeks, the embryo isn’t yet a fetus and it doesn’t have a heart. An embryo is termed a fetus beginning in the 11th week of pregnancy, medical experts say.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/fetal-heartbeat-abortion-laws-taps-emotion-science-77698556

‘Fetal heartbeat’ in U.S. abortion laws taps emotion, not science

Julie Carr Smyth and Kimberlee Kruesi, The Associated Press
Published Wednesday, April 28, 2021

NASHVILLE -- Dr. Michael Cackovic has treated his share of pregnant women. So when Republican lawmakers across the U.S. began passing bans on abortion at what they term "the first detectable fetal heartbeat," he was exasperated.

That's because at the point where advanced technology can detect that first flutter, as early as six weeks, the embryo isn't yet a fetus and it doesn't have a heart.

Continued: https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/fetal-heartbeat-in-u-s-abortion-laws-taps-emotion-not-science-1.5405170