Crisis pregnancy center’s forms give rare insight into anti-abortion practices

The free organizations offer counseling while trying to dissuade women from having abortions. They promise to protect health data but aren’t bound by federal privacy law.

Oct. 13, 2024
by Abigail Brooks

A free family planning center in Twin Falls, Idaho, asks its visitors for sensitive, private information, including nonmedical questions about religion and financial status, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

While the Sage Women’s Center promises to protect the information of its clients, it isn’t bound by medical privacy laws and may be misleading women who are coping with unplanned pregnancies, consumer advocates say.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/crisis-pregnancy-centers-forms-privacy-abortion-rcna172566

U.S states are already collecting more abortion data. And HIPAA won’t always keep it private.

BY: KELCIE MOSELEY-MORRIS
JUNE 1, 2024

Years before the Dobbs decision that struck down U.S. constitutional abortion rights, providers like Dr. Kylie Cooper were already uncomfortable with some of the reporting requirements for abortion procedures in states where they practiced.

Cooper was a maternal-fetal medicine specialist for several years in Idaho before she reluctantly left the state in 2023 because of the near-total abortion ban that is now in place. But when abortion was still legal, she was required to fill out a form and submit it to the state with information about the patient and the procedure, including the physician’s name and when it occurred. While the law said that the information would be aggregated and could not identify individual patients, Cooper never felt sure about how it would be used or how secure the data would be kept.

Continued: https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/06/01/states-are-already-collecting-more-abortion-data-and-hipaa-wont-always-keep-it-private/

USA – For some pregnant patients, unregulated anti-abortion centers are the only affordable option

Research has found that crisis pregnancy centers often provide inaccurate information about pregnancy, which can influence people's reproductive decisions.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
February 9, 2024

Savannah McNally was 24 years old, and in the middle of a divorce, trying to sell her house, wrapping up her service in the Navy and figuring out a way to finish college. She was also pregnant.

“It was pretty much instantly a feeling of dread. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want kids,” McNally recalled. “I was crying and screaming, ‘This is not going to happen.’”

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/02/crisis-pregnancy-centers-anti-abortion-only-option/

Clinicians to Lawmakers: Abortion Bans in the United States are Causing a Health and Human Rights Crisis

On the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, abortion bans continue to harm patients and put clinicians in impossible situations. Physicians for Human Rights joins the renewed call for protection of fundamental rights to health and reproductive justice.

January 18, 2024
By William Jaffe, Advocacy Coordinator

January 22 will mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which established federal protection of the right to abortion in the United States. Since June 2022, when the Supreme Court reversed Roe, at least 14 states have adopted abortion bans imposing severe civil and criminal penalties on clinicians for providing abortion except in very narrow circumstances.

Health and human rights advocates across the United States – including Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) – oppose these bans and the profound harm they cause, to patients and clinicians alike. Read on for a recap of PHR’s work on reproductive justice at the national and international arenas, and a look at how we’re gearing up for the year ahead.

Continued: https://phr.org/our-work/resources/clinicians-to-lawmakers-abortion-bans-in-the-united-states-are-causing-a-health-and-human-rights-crisis/

These States Are Using Fetal Personhood to Put Women Behind Bars

Hundreds of women who used drugs while pregnant have faced criminal charges — even when they deliver healthy babies.

By CARY ASPINWALL, The Marshall Project
July 25, 2023

When Quitney Armstead learned she was pregnant while locked up in a rural Alabama jail, she made a promise — to God and herself — to stay clean.

She had struggled with addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder for nearly a decade, since serving in the Iraq War. But when she found out she was pregnant with her third child, in October 2018, she resolved: “I want to be a mama to my kids again.”

Continued: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/25/pregnant-women-prosecutions-alabama-oklahoma

A 10-year-old Ohio rape victim got an abortion. Now her doctor is being punished.

Reprimanding Caitlin Bernard for speaking out could have far-reaching chilling effects.

By Nicole Narea
May 26, 2023

The case of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who sought an abortion in Indiana just after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year became a major flashpoint in the political debate. On Thursday, her doctor was reprimanded and fined for discussing the case — and physicians worry that it will have a chilling effect on any kind of patient advocacy that conflicts with the political agenda of state lawmakers.

The Indiana medical board found that Caitlin Bernard, an OB-GYN, violated patient privacy laws in publicly disclosing that she had performed the abortion without the consent of the patient or their parents, even though she never named the patient and only provided a general outline of the case, as doctors typically do when performing health advocacy. She will be fined $3,000 and issued a letter of reprimand, but will be allowed to keep her medical license.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2023/5/26/23738974/indiana-abortion-doctor-caitlin-bernard-ohio

26.05.2023

Commentary

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice punishment

anti-choice vindictiveness

Dr. Caitlin Bernard

Dr. Tracey Wilkinson

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

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

Could an Abortion Ban Put Your Life in Danger?

What you should know about your medical rights—and what still needs to change to keep you safe.

BY GARNET HENDERSON
PUBLISHED: AUG 16, 2022

In the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, alarming stories have emerged of pregnant people being denied necessary medical care in some of the 15 states that now ban all or most abortions. To name a few: a woman in Wisconsin bled for 10 days due to an incomplete miscarriage when emergency room staff refused to remove the fetal tissue; one Texas physician said they were told by hospital management not to treat ectopic pregnancies until they ruptured (a life-threatening event); and a Louisiana woman was forced to endure painful labor after her water broke at just 16 weeks, because doctors were told they could not do an abortion procedure.

Continued: https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a40860997/abortion-bans-medical-rights-hospital-pharmacy/

The Women Who Leave Anti-Abortion Picket Lines to Get Abortions

The rank and file of the so-called pro-life movement is full of people who need reproductive care—even if it means literally leaving a protest outside a clinic to ask for it.

Patrick Adams
Jul. 02, 2022

A few days before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, a woman who described herself as an anti-abortion activist showed up in the waiting room of Dr. Marissa Lapedis, a family-medicine doctor who performs the procedure in Atlanta.

But she wasn’t there to protest—she had an appointment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-women-who-leave-anti-abortion-picket-lines-to-get-abortions?ref=scroll