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/

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/

Byron Calhoun says abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life. He’s the only high-risk OB/GYN in central West Virginia.

By Caroline Kitchener
Sept. 10, 2021

At a 2019 antiabortion conference in Ontario, Canada, Byron Calhoun was introduced as a “messenger of God.”

The doctor assumed the podium in a pinstripe suit and bow tie, his high forehead glinting underneath the hotel ballroom’s bright fluorescents. Dozens of conference-goers clapped, then grew quiet, eyes fixed on Calhoun and the statistic that brought them all there, blown up on a banner behind him: “1 out of every 5 babies is killed by abortion.”

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2021/the-lily/antiabortion-doctor-obgyn-care/

10.09.2021

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Charleston Area Medical Center

Christian Medical Fellowship

Family Policy Council

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates

perinatal hospice

polycystic kidney disease

state medical boards

Steve Calvin

Women’s Health Center

Feminists Fight Fake Abortion Clinics: “No One Should Be Lied To”

Organizations like SPARK, ReproAction and Abortion Access Front are exposing the deceptive tactics of fake abortion clinics and organizing to stop them from harming women.

8/8/2021
Ms. Magazine
by CARRIE N. BAKER and JULIET SCHULMAN-HALL

“My high school was down the street from a crisis pregnancy center. My house that I grew up in was next door to a crisis center. I drove by it every day and saw ‘pregnancy resource center.’ I just assumed that it was a medical provider. I wasn’t the only person fooled,” says Agbo Ikor, Director of Programs at SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW in Atlanta, Georgia.

“My best friend when she was pregnant, she was taken to a crisis pregnancy center. And while she was there, they shamed her. They made her feel like if she had an abortion she was just this terrible person. It was very traumatizing for her,” says Ikor. “It is infuriating. It’s just really, really hard to think about.”

https://msmagazine.com/2021/08/08/feminists-fight-fake-abortion-clinics-no-one-should-be-lied-to/

08.08.2021

Abortion Access Front

abortion pill reversal

Agbo Ikor

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Anna Bean

anti-choice deception

anti-choice misinformation

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice sex education in public schools

Birthright International

Care Network

crisis pregnancy center

Dr. Andrea Swartzendruber

Equity Forward

fake clinics

Fake Clinics Suck

Heartbeat International

Human Coalition

Lizz Winstead

NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut Foundation

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates

Obria Medical Clinics

ReproAction

Shireen Shakouri

SPARK: Reproductive Justice Now

Inside the ‘fake clinics’ where women are persuaded to carry pregnancies to term

Inside the 'fake clinics' where women are persuaded to carry pregnancies to term
‘Crisis pregnancy centers’ give counseling, pregnancy tests – and outnumber abortion providers three to one in Georgia

by Khushbu Shah in Milledgeville, Georgia
Fri 16 Aug 2019

In her office at the Crossroads Pregnancy Center in Milledgeville, Georgia, Pam Alford hung a picture of a grave-filled cemetery in memory of the thousands of the abortions taking place every day in America. Or so says the caption.

Other indications of the center staff’s attitude to abortion fill public areas of the building. Someone has stenciled “life is beautiful” in a hallway. Figurines of Jesus and the cross line the lunch area walls.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/16/georgia-abortion-crisis-pregnancy-centers

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/

USA – SCOTUS Turns its Back on Women

SCOTUS Turns its Back on Women
Supreme Court ruling condones deceptive tactics of fake women’s health centers, puts Roe at risk

For Immediate Release: June 26, 2018
Contact: media@prochoiceamerica.org

After the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in NIFLA v. Becerra, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue issued the following statement:

“One vote: That’s the difference between ending the lies and deception at fake women’s health centers or letting them off the hook for their dangerous and deceptive practices. The deception at fake women’s health centers is real, but five Justices still refused to act on behalf of women who need accurate information to make the best decisions for our families and our lives. Today, the Supreme Court turned its back on women and condoned the deceptive tactics used by fake women’s health centers.

Continued: https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/2018/06/26/scotus-turns-its-back-on-women/