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/

Canada – Fake crisis pregnancy centres infringe on reproductive freedom

We need transparency instead of deception

By Peak Web
March 23, 2023

Content warning: mentions of pro-life rhetoric.

Masquerading as support services for pregnant people, clinics known as crisis pregnancy centres (CPC) are dangerous and deceive those that require support services to deal with unwanted pregnancies. These centres operate under the guise of neutrality. In reality, they often have religious affiliations and anti-abortion motives. This should be illegal. However, if they continue to operate, they should at least be monitored for bias and medical malpractice. Using vague and misleading rhetoric to advance an anti-abortion agenda imposes on people’s ability to make informed decisions about their reproductive health. While knowing about abortion alternatives is valuable, they must be discussed alongside abortion as a viable option. Anything less is deceptive.

A new report from the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) showcases how they impose anti-choice ideals onto individuals that unknowingly seek out help from them.

Continued: https://the-peak.ca/2023/03/fake-crisis-pregnancy-centres-infringe-on-reproductive-freedom/

23.03.2023

Commentary

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada

anti-choice deception

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misinformation

BC Humanist Association

CPCs

crisis pregnancy centres

Canada – Why Anti-Abortion Groups Should Not Be Charities

March 23, 2023
Joyce Arthur, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada

If you support the right to abortion like most Canadians, you may be surprised to learn that the majority of groups that oppose abortion enjoy charitable tax status. How did they earn this privilege and why do they still have it?

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) tracks anti-choice groups and currently counts 316 of them. About half are advocacy groups and half are crisis pregnancy centres – “CPCs”. About 71% (222) of all anti-choice groups enjoy charitable tax status, including an astounding 93.5% of CPCs. These organizations claim to be unbiased counselling centres for pregnant people.

Continued: https://www.healthinsight.ca/advocacy/why-anti-abortion-groups-should-not-be-charities/

USA – Millions In Tax Dollars Are Flowing To Anti-Abortion ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’

The typically religious centers aim to convince women not to get abortions.

Kimberlee Kruesi
02/05/2022

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Anti-abortion centers across the country are receiving tens of millions of tax dollars to talk women out of ending their pregnancies, a nearly fivefold increase from a decade ago that resulted from an often-overlooked effort by mostly Republican-led states.

The nonprofits known as crisis pregnancy centers are typically religiously affiliated and counsel clients against having an abortion as part of their free but limited services. That practice and the fact that they generally are not licensed as medical facilities have raised questions about whether it’s appropriate to funnel so much tax money their way.

Continued: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/millions-in-tax-dollars-are-flowing-to-anti-abortion-crisis-pregnancy-centers_n_61febaa5e4b05004242e0178

Texas wants to cut women’s health services while preserving an anti-abortion program

by Shannon Najmabadi and Edgar Walters, The Texas Tribune
Monday, August 31st 2020

Texas is proposing to cut nearly $3.8 million in funding from programs that offer low-income residents access to contraceptives and breast and cervical cancer screenings, while leaving intact a robustly funded program that discourages women from having abortions.

Texas health officials proposed the cuts while taking great pains to avoid belt-tightening in most other programs that offer direct services in health care. As the coronavirus pandemic ravages parts of the economy, leaving the state with a projected $4.6 billion deficit, Gov. Greg Abbott asked state agencies to cut their spending by 5% — but largely exempted programs deemed crucial to public health.

Continued: https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/texas-wants-to-cut-womens-health-services-while-preserving-an-anti-abortion-program

USA – The New Front Line of the Anti-Abortion Movement

The New Front Line of the Anti-Abortion Movement
As rural health care flounders, crisis pregnancy centers are gaining ground.

By Eliza Griswold
Nov 11, 2019

On the door of a white R.V. that serves as the Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center’s mobile unit are the stencilled words “No Cash, No Narcotics.” The center, in Terre Haute, Indiana, is one of more than twenty-five hundred such C.P.C.s in the U.S.—Christian organizations that provide services including free pregnancy testing, low-cost S.T.D. testing, parenting classes, and ultrasounds. Sharon Carey, the executive director of the Wabash Valley center, acquired the van in January, 2018, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, after finding a company that retrofits secondhand vehicles with medical equipment. That May, Carey began to dispatch the van to rural towns whose residents often cannot afford the gas needed to drive to the C.P.C. or to a hospital. Carey has selected parking spots in areas with high foot traffic, so that prospective clients can drop in to learn about the C.P.C.’s services. In Montezuma, she chose the lot outside a Dollar General. In Rockville, she discovered an I.G.A. supermarket frequented by the local Amish community; the van parks next to the hitching post where Amish shoppers tether their buggy horses. Driving straight up to the Amish farms would have been the wrong approach, Carey felt. The community is insular, and was unlikely to welcome outsiders offering their teen-agers free pregnancy tests or screening for chlamydia and gonorrhea.
Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/the-new-front-line-of-the-anti-abortion-movement

USA – Can Anti-Abortion ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ Snag Federal Family-Planning Funds?

Can Anti-Abortion ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ Snag Federal Family-Planning Funds?

By Ed Kilgore
Nov 8, 2019

Like nature, federal funding streams abhor a vacuum. So when the Trump administration pushed Planned Parenthood out of women’s family-planning programs by stipulating that recipients could not refer patients to (or have an organization connection with) abortion providers, a pot of about $60 million a year suddenly became available to anyone who could supply the stipulated services without running afoul of the new regs.

For the most part, the anti-abortion movement’s favorite alternative to Planned Parenthood clinics, its huge (an estimated 2,750 of them) network of so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” don’t really pretend to offer “family planning” or women’s health services. They mostly exist to talk or coerce pregnant women into carrying pregnancies to term, providing (at most) limited services (ultrasounds, of course, and perhaps neonatal health advice and adoption referrals) to make that choice seem morally or religiously obligatory.

Continued: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/can-crisis-pregnancy-centers-snag-federal-funds.html

USA – Southern States Funnel Public Money to Fake Abortion Clinics

Southern States Funnel Public Money to Fake Abortion Clinics
"Heartbeat bills" aren't the only effort that legislatures are taking to restrict access to reproductive health care.

By Sarah Moore
Published July 20, 2019

Nine states, six of them in the South, have passed admittedly unconstitutional abortion bans this year with the express aim of challenging the right to terminate a pregnancy as established in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But “heartbeat bills” aren’t the only effort that legislatures are taking to restrict access to reproductive health care.

Nationwide, 14 states are sending tax dollars to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs), which pose as legitimate medical facilities offering free pregnancy testing and ultrasounds when in fact their true function is to dissuade people from seeking abortion, often by providing them with false information.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/southern-states-funnel-public-money-to-fake-abortion-clinics/