Supreme Court case about ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ highlights debate over truthful advertising standards

December 17, 2025
Carly Thomsen

The latest Supreme Court case related to abortion is not technically about the legal right to have one. When the court heard oral arguments on Dec. 2, 2025, the word “abortion” came up only three times. The first instance was more than an hour into the 82-minute hearing.

Instead, First Choice Women’s Resource Centers Inc. v. Platkin hinges on whether First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association give a chain of five crisis pregnancy centers in New Jersey the right to protect its donor records from disclosure to state authorities. The centers are Christian nonprofits that try to stop pregnant women from obtaining abortions.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-case-about-crisis-pregnancy-centers-highlights-debate-over-truthful-advertising-standards-271254

USA – Lawmakers Are Trying to Hold Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Account

Post-Dobbs, the GOP has given them millions in taxpayer dollars.

Laura C. Morel, Mother Jones
April 10, 2025

Last month, during an Indiana state legislative hearing, Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz from Richmond, a small city in the eastern part of the state, discussed a resolution he filed declaring that the state’s General Assembly “strongly supports pregnancy care centers in their unique, positive contributions to the individual lives of women, men, and babies—both born and unborn,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported. “We have hospitals in rural Indiana that have no OB-GYNs,” Raatz said during the session. “Why not have an innocent individual stand alongside someone and help them make decisions and connect them with resources?” Abortion is banned in Indiana with limited exceptions.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/lawmakers-are-trying-to-hold-crisis-pregnancy-centers-to-account/

Puerto Rico – Anti-abortion centers without health regulations deceive those seeking abortion

Three anti-abortion centers advertise themselves as offering medical services, sonograms and information about abortions and abortion pills, even though they are not regulated by the Department of Health. People who come to their facilities, lured by confusing language, share their personal information, not knowing that they will then receive false information and multiple follow-up calls urging them to continue with a pregnancy they do not want.

Sept 26, 2024
Photos by Brandon Cruz González | Center for Investigative Journalism
by Cindy Burgos | ALL and Center for Investigative Journalism

They look like ordinary medical offices — with scrubs -clad employees offering free sonograms and pregnancy tests — but they are not. They are called “crisis pregnancy centers,” and while they promote themselves as places that provide scientific medical information about options for an unwanted pregnancy, in practice, they are anti-abortion centers that use techniques of deception, manipulation, incomplete or false information, and from a religious perspective, to convince pregnant people to continue with a pregnancy they do not want.

There are three such pseudoclinics in Puerto Rico: two Hope Women's Clinics in Río Piedras and Bayamón; and Centro Raquel in Carolina. All are located near or next to one of the four clinics in Puerto Rico that offer abortion services, an essential health procedure that can only be performed by a licensed physician.

Continued: https://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2024/09/centros-antiaborto-sin-regulacion-salud-puerto-rico/

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 – The Most Popular Digital Abortion Clinics, Ranked by Data Privacy

Telehealth companies that provide abortion pills are surging in popularity. Which are as safe as they claim to be?

Kristen Poli
Aug 21, 2023

A NEW CLASS of health care startups has emerged in response to the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the federal right to abortion last year. These “digital abortion clinics” connect patients with health care providers who are able to prescribe mifepristone and misoprostol, a course of care commonly described as the “abortion pill.”

These services, many of which were founded before Dobbs v. Jackson, are poised to eliminate a major paradox in the field of reproductive health: Medication abortion is currently the most common way to terminate a pregnancy, yet only 1 in 4 adults are familiar with it, according to a recent study by KFF.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/most-popular-digital-telehealth-medication-abortion-ranked-data-privacy/

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