The crisis pregnancy center next door: How taxpayer money intended for poor families is funding a growing anti-abortion movement

By Casey Tolan, Majlie de Puy Kamp and Isabelle Chapman. Photographs by Maddie McGarvey for CNN
Tue October 25, 2022

A few blocks from the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, America’s battle over abortion is playing out under one roof.

On one side of a squat single-story office building, a Planned Parenthood clinic offers reproductive health care and refers patients for abortions. Next door is a branch of Pregnancy Decision Health Center, a crisis pregnancy center that offers counseling and support for pregnant women – but also works to dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies and has been accused of promoting misinformation about abortion.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/crisis-pregnancy-centers-taxpayer-money-invs

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

What Abortion Pill ‘Reversal’ Really Accomplishes

It’s more than an unproven medical treatment—it’s a view into the antiabortion movement’s larger project.

Sep 5, 2022

THE AMERICAN ANTIABORTION movement is on a full-court press to remake the nation in its image. In June, its decades-long campaign to install sympathetic Supreme Court justices paid off with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, which stripped away the constitutional right to abortion. Now, the movement is pushing for draconian personhood laws (legislation granting fetuses the same rights as people) in an effort to make abortion murder.

In some states, the push is already working. In Georgia, for example, a new law allows expecting parents to claim fetuses as dependents on their tax returns. These victories are the result of a shrewd, ambitious strategy. The rise of an experimental treatment known as abortion pill “reversal” is part of this plan. Although it might appear a peripheral concern—hardly anyone actually seeks out this treatment—it’s a distinctly revealing pet project. The story of the rise of abortion pill reversal contains the antiabortion movement’s blueprint within it.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/abortion-pill-reversal-essay/

The US abortion decision is already having global impacts

OPINION: The reversal of Roe v. Wade is a tragedy not just for the United States, but for women everywhere

By TK Sundari Ravindran, Pascale Allotey, Sofia Gruskin
08.31.2022

The past decades have brought modest improvements to women’s reproductive health around the world. Over the last 30 years, global rates of unintended pregnancies have thankfully declined by almost 20 percent, presumably in part because of better access to education and contraceptives. In 1973, the US Supreme Court, ruling in Roe v. Wade, declared an American woman’s right to an abortion to be fundamental and constitutionally protected. This landmark decision helped inspire many countries around the world to enshrine the individual right to bodily autonomy in law or expand access to abortion services — including Canada and India. Many women have been able to access safe abortions and post-abortion care.

Then the 2022 US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://knowablemagazine.org/article/health-disease/2022/us-abortion-decision-already-having-global-impacts

Abortion pill reversal is a myth driven by the anti-abortion agenda

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, one of the lies that continues to spread is disinformation about abortion reversals

by Xenia Ellenbogen
August 11th, 2022

Misinformation about reproductive health is always circulating. But since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson struck down Roe v. Wade in June, disinformation about abortions is spreading like wildfire—and it can have some dangerous results. One of the lies spreading is abortion pill “reversal”—a myth proselytized and upheld by crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) or fake clinics with an anti-abortion agenda. Despite tenuous experimental research, CPCs purport that if people begin to have regrets about going through with an abortion after already starting the process, the person can halt the abortion after taking the first medication.

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2022/08/11/abortion-pill-reversal-myth-anti-abortion-agenda/

US anti-abortion group targets Ukrainian refugees

Heartbeat International is appealing for money to fund its anti-abortion network in Ukraine and eastern Europe

Diana Cariboni
20 June 2022

US anti-abortion group Heartbeat International is taking advantage of Russia’s war in Ukraine to fundraise for ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ targeting refugees, openDemocracy has learnt.

Reproductive health experts fear the group could use its centres in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Romania to gain access to vulnerable people and persuade them to continue with unwanted pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/heartbeat-exploits-ukraine-fundraising-anti-abortion-rape/

Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients

by Grace Oldham and Dhruv Mehrotra
June 15, 2022

Facebook is collecting ultra-sensitive personal data about abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target and influence people online, in violation of its own policies and promises.

In the wake of a leaked Supreme Court opinion signaling the likely end of nationwide abortion protections, privacy experts are sounding alarms about all the ways people’s data trails could be used against them if some states criminalize abortion.

https://revealnews.org/article/facebook-data-abortion-crisis-pregnancy-center/

How an unproven abortion ‘reversal’ treatment has advanced in the US

By Samantha Putterman
April 4, 2022

When Texas enacted a ban on abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy, an international women’s health advocacy nonprofit organization saw a 1,100% increase in orders for so-called abortion pills.

The two-drug combination enables women to terminate their pregnancies within the first 10 weeks. Though the spike in demand has since leveled off at Aid Access, purchases hovered around 175% higher than usual in the months after the Texas law took effect.

Continued: https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/apr/04/abortions-reversible-how-unproven-abortion-r/

USA – Anti-abortion movement’s big plan: Supercharged “crisis pregnancy centers” and data harvesting

Anti-choice activists roll out bold new strategy to register and track abortion-seekers. Why do they want to know?

By KATHRYN JOYCE
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Oklahoma state Sen. George Burns, a Republican, introduced a new bill this month that would require anyone seeking an abortion in the state to call a designated hotline to receive counseling from "care agents" about abortion alternatives, and also to be screened for the possibility that they are victims of abuse, human trafficking or abortion coercion. The bill, SB 1167 or the "Every Mother Matters Act" (EMMA), is couched as an offer of resources, from housing to employment assistance, to provide "compassionate options for those faced with unexpected pregnancies," as Burns said in a press release. He acknowledges, however, that his "ultimate goal is ending abortion altogether."

So far, generally so familiar. But there's an important new twist here that looks to be the tip of a national iceberg: The Oklahoma bill also provides for the state Department of Health to assign each abortion-seeker who calls the hotline a "unique identifying number." Abortion providers would be required to obtain and record that number, which would also be registered in a DHS database.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/02/12/anti-abortion-movements-big-plan-supercharged-crisis-pregnancy-centers-and-data-harvesting/

12.02.2022

Commentary

Featured

American Center for Law and Justice

Angela Paxton

anti-choice deception

anti-choice invasion of privacy

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misinformation

anti-choice misogyny

Chelsey Youman

crisis pregnancy centers

Cynthia Conti-Cook

digital technology and abortion

Heartbeat International

HIPAA restrictions

Human Coalition

Human Coalition Action

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

pregnancy care centers

Privacy International

Abortion in the Surveillance State

The digital platforms people rely on to access or learn about abortion are also being wielded to spy on and punish them.

By Kylie Cheung
November 22, 2021

Shortly after Texas enacted Senate Bill 8, a near-total abortion ban that’s primarily enforced by citizens spying on and policing each other, Texas Right to Life launched what can really only be called a snitch hotline, calling on the nosiest of neighbors and worst of people to submit “tips” about people they suspected to be seeking or helping people seek abortions.

Things didn’t go as planned for the hotline, once the teens of TikTok and other Very Online abortion rights advocates caught wind of it. Good Samaritans across the internet joined forces to inundate the hotline with false tips, Shrek memes, furry porn, and other generally ludicrous submissions, rendering the thing useless for anyone but ride-or-die Shrek fans. The hotline — which likely would have been weaponized by abusive ex-partners or anti-abortion activists seeking to make an easy $10,000 by suing people who help others have abortions — has since been dropped by several hosting services.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/abortion-in-the-surveillance-state-1848076906