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This Week's Updates:
Data Leak Underscores Risk Posed by Crisis Pregnancy Centers
Yesterday, Abortion, Everyday author Jessica Valenti reported on a series of Heartbeat International training videos which appear to reveal the names and personal health information of over a dozen women who visited a Heartbeat-affiliated crisis pregnancy center (CPC). Heartbeat is one of the largest CPC networks in the world, and supports affiliated anti-abortion “clinics” with grants, legal protection, communications materials, and other resources. Now, it appears that Heartbeat is collecting identifiable information from clients at some of these CPCs, and storing it in a database that can be accessed by an unknown number of staff and volunteers.
In April, Campaign for Accountability sent complaints to the attorneys general of Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington alleging CPCs in their states had potentially violated consumer protection laws by telling clients their personal health information was protected under HIPAA—a law that Heartbeat has acknowledged does not apply to the vast majority of these centers. All the CPCs featured in CfA’s complaint were affiliates of Heartbeat, though it is unclear whether or not Heartbeat has similar access to their cleints’ data.
“Heartbeat International’s disregard for privacy calls into question the privacy practices of their affiliates,” said CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith in response to Valenti’s findings. “If any CPC passing information to Heartbeat is also inaccurately claiming HIPAA compliance, there is greater urgency for state attorneys general to hold them accountable for these deceptive claims.”
Crisis Pregnancy Centers Counter-Sue Letitia James
In early May, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Heartbeat International and 11 crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) for promoting “abortion pill reversal” – an unproven and unsafe protocol that has been embraced by anti-abortion activists, despite the danger it poses to patients. Now, a coalition of CPCs are counter-suing James for “targeting, chilling, and punishing” their speech, and allege that abortion pill reversal is a safe procedure. The lawsuit, which was filed by attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom, primarily cites an “abortion pill reversal” study carried out by Dr. George Delgado and published in a journal with long-standing ties to the anti-abortion movement. In 2019, The Guardian reported that Delgado had falsely claimed an affiliation with the University of California San Diego, which he was eventually forced to correct.
Dr. Daniel Grossman, who leads a reproductive health research program at the University of California San Francisco, told Kaiser Health News that abortion pill reversal is part of a larger strategy that aims to mislead patients about abortion risks. “All of that misinformation has played an important role in eroding people’s rights to this essential component of health care,” said Grossman. If James succeeds in her legal fight, New York-based CPCs will no longer be able to make deceptive claims about abortion reversal, removing at least one barrier to evidence-based reproductive care.
Meta Updates Transparency Tools in EU – But Not US
Meta has launched some last-minute additions to CrowdTangle, a tool used by researchers and journalists to monitor the spread of content across Facebook and Instagram. The changes are intended to boost transparency surrounding the EU elections, and include country-specific dashboards that track posts from candidates as well as public discussion. CrowdTangle itself will be shut down on August 14, long before the U.S. presidential election. In its place, Meta has built a “Content Library” which will be largely inaccessible to journalists and lacks several key features, including the ability to download data or filter information by physical location. Meta eventually announced some minor modifications in response to criticism from academics, but the Content Library remains a limited tool for network analysis.
Given that context, it’s interesting that Meta is falling back on CrowdTangle in the EU, and making updates to a tool that (allegedly) won’t be around for much longer. At the very least, it suggests Meta is not prepared to launch similar features in its Content Library, and may be scrambling to appease European regulators who are concerned about the company’s response to coordinated disinformation. CrowdTangle, for the record, was never perfect; it still had large blind spots, as TTP reported in 2020, and placed the burden of enforcement on election officials. Now, Meta seems poised to replace CrowdTangle with something even less functional, at a time when AI disinformation is on the rise and transparency tools are desperately needed.
