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Dear John,
Imagine being in need of a medical procedure, going to a clinic believing you can receive that treatment, and instead being met by non-medical staff who harass and shame you for wanting that procedure in the first place.
Across the country, women face this reality every day when they go to a Crisis Pregnancy Center looking for care. They instead get misinformation from anti-abortion extremist staff who are working to pressure these women into keeping their pregnancies. These non-medical facilities don’t fall under HIPAA, so once a patient leaves, her information can be given to anti-abortion groups who will continue the tirade of harassment, even divulging her pregnancy status to family members.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers are Fake Clinics and put countless women’s health at risk every single day. Their unqualified, often non-medical staff have been documented as misdiagnosing or misleading patients into thinking they are further along in their pregnancy than they really are.
And although the truth of Crisis Pregnancy Centers is widely reported and known, these centers remain legal, and their harmful practices are funded by millions of dollars from the federal government thanks to my anti-abortion extremist colleagues in Congress.
Just this week, I sat in a hearing where Republican Congressmembers sought to divert funds intended for low-income families and children to these centers. As Republicans talk about the misuse of taxpayer dollars and the bloated federal budget, they are choosing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on practices that harm women.
Because they are not health centers, these facilities can lie to their patients without consequence. They have been known to falsely tell patients that taking contraceptives is the same as having an abortion or that they can provide services that are not medically tested, such as so-called “abortion reversal.”
We cannot let this stand. Crisis Pregnancy Centers cause harm, and when we take back control of Congress, we will work to end this practice once and for all.
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