Canada – Fake ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ run by right-wing religious groups use ‘deception and manipulation’ to trick vulnerable women

Taxpayer scam: ‘No charity should be in the business of deceiving people who are considering an abortion and possibly delaying them from seeking health-care’

by Paul Henderson
Oct 19, 2025

The ad on the bus stop bench in front of Chilliwack Senior Secondary School has been there for many months, maybe years: “Cherish Women’s Resource Centre.” It includes a logo with arms forming a heart, hands clasping with the words “Pregnant? Unplanned? Here to help.”

The location in front of a high school where the ad is seen daily by hundreds of teenage girls is no coincidence.

But while “The Cherish Project” claims to be there to support girls and women with information and guidance about reproductive health, in reality it is simply a group of non-medically trained evangelical Christians intent on misleading vulnerable young women into doing what church fathers say they should do with their bodies. Continued: https://www.pauljhenderson.com/fake-crisis-pregnancy-centres-run-by-right-wing-religious-groups-use-deception-and-manipulation-to-trick-vulnerable-women/

USA – We Need to Talk About ICE and Anti-Abortion Centers

These groups prey on immigrant women and collect their data. It's not hard to imagine what happens next.

Kylie Cheung
Jul 24, 2025

We all know anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers don’t offer real health care. They set up shop near actual clinics to lure in potential abortion seekers, collect their data, and inundate them with disinformation designed to dissuade them from seeking abortion. But under the Trump administration, these over-funded fake clinics are situated to play another potential role: enforcing Republicans’ racist immigration policies by targeting vulnerable, pregnant immigrant women.

And because CPCs aren’t real health providers, many aren’t bound to the same medical privacy laws. That means they can share people’s personal information with the government—and many do, as a condition of receiving state funding. CPCs have become the enforcement arm of not just the anti-abortion movement, but also, increasingly, the government itself.

Continued: https://jessica.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-ice-and-anti

24.07.2025

CPCs

crisis pregnancy centers

Heartbeat International

HIPAA violations

immigrants and abortion access

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice

Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy Biotechnology and Bioethics

privacy of health information

Susannah Baruch

Thriving Families program

USA – Study of Crisis Pregnancy Centers Reveals Misleading and Dangerous Claims

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine provides the first national assessment of crisis pregnancy centers and their operations

December 02, 2024
Mika Ono

A new study from scientists at the University of California San Diego introduces a powerful new approach to understanding the operation of crisis pregnancy centers, non-profit organizations dedicated to an anti-abortion agenda. The study published in JAMA Internal Medicine provides the first account of the practices of crisis pregnancy centers (CPC) operating in the United States.

"While our study shows crisis pregnancy centers provide valuable community services, like parenting classes, there is a clear need for consumer safety measures to prevent the promotion and use of their questionable medical services," said John W. Ayers, Ph.D., who is deputy director of informatics at the UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute, in addition to scientist at UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute, co-creator of ChoiceWatch.org and study coauthor.

Continued: https://today.ucsd.edu/story/study-of-crisis-pregnancy-centers-reveals-misleading-and-dangerous-claims

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 – 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

Google Maps Regularly Misleads People Searching for Abortion Clinics

By Davey Alba and Jack Gillum Technology
Design & development by Cedric Sam

August 15, 2022

Chey was a 19-year-old college sophomore
living near Orlando, Florida, when she discovered she was pregnant and decided
to have an abortion. She didn’t have anyone she could ask for guidance, so she
searched Google for a nearby clinic. “I wanted to find somewhere close to my
partner, so I could tell him and bring him with me,” she said in a recent
interview.

A Google Maps query for an abortion led her
somewhere that offered the opposite: a so-called crisis pregnancy center—a type
of non-medical organization with a mission to encourage women like Chey to go
through with their unwanted pregnancies.

continued: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-google-search-abortion-clinic-crisis-pregnancy-center/

USA – Pregnancy Center Trap. And how not to fall for it.

By Claire Lampen, The Cut
May 23, 2022

Type “abortion clinic near me” into your browser, and the search engine will likely return some murky results. Websites that ask if you are pregnant and “Feeling overwhelmed?” or “Looking for an abortion?” — without actually allowing you to schedule one. You may see abortion mentioned only in the context of “risks.” Or you may just see a flurry of “free” services: pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and counseling, all at zero cost. But “if a site or a center offers only free services,” says Andrea Swartzendruber, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health, it may be a sign that you’ve found your way to a crisis pregnancy center: a sham medical practice designed to lure people considering abortions and pressure them into birth. Often, Swartzendruber explains, “there aren’t telltale signs” to differentiate a real clinic from a fake one, but “there could be hints.”

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/abortion-crisis-pregnancy-center.html

Crisis Pregnancy Centers, State-Funded Harm, and State-Based Solutions

As the Supreme Court evaluates abortion laws, states should bolster reproductive rights and better regulate CPCs.

Feb 14, 2022
Amal Bass, The Regulatory Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to review whether Mississippi’s pre-viability abortion ban is still unconstitutional, and the Court’s failure to enjoin Texas’s near-total abortion ban, have thrown a spotlight on the precarious state of abortion rights in the United States. These cases come after decades of abortion restrictions—mostly at the state level—that have already made abortion inaccessible for many people, especially Black and brown people, individuals living in poverty, and people in rural areas.

For example, the federal Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funding for abortion care, and Pennsylvania law prohibits the use of state funding. The resulting denial of abortion coverage for people in Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program disproportionately harms Black and brown people who face structural inequities that make them more likely to live in poverty than white people.

Continued: https://www.theregreview.org/2022/02/14/bass-crisis-pregnancy-centers-state-funded-harm-state-based-solutions/

USA – Crisis pregnancy centers come up short in providing access to information on pregnancy options

August 9, 2021
University of North Carolina, Gillings School of Global Public Health

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), also called pregnancy resource centers, are non-profit and often religiously affiliated organizations that operate with the goal of convincing people considering abortion to continue their pregnancies. With more than 2,500 locations across the U.S., they are more prevalent than abortion clinics but do not provide the same level of pregnancy-related care. Many do not provide medical care at all.

Researchers like Alice Cartwright, a doctoral student in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, are seeking to understand what proportion of people visit CPCs during their pregnancies. New findings from a study she has co-authored suggest that these centers are not meeting the needs of people seeking information on abortion.

Continued: https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/crisis-pregnancy-centers-come-up-short-in-providing-access-to-information-on-pregnancy-options/