This nurse wanted to help women avoid abortions. Instead, she became a crisis pregnancy center whistleblower.

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** THE WEEKLY REVEAL
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Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023

Hello! In this issue:
* A whistleblower’s complaints ([link removed]) show there’s little anyone can do when anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers fail to keep their clients safe.

* The growing global network of White nationalist groups ([link removed]) .

* Updates from our After Ayotzinapa event in D.C. and our documentary premiere at Sundance.


** NEW
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** This Nurse Wanted to Help Women Avoid Abortions. Then She Saw Infection Control Problems at a Crisis Pregnancy Center.
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** Registered nurse Susan Rames. Credit: Jon Cherry for Reveal
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Anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers look and act like medical clinics. It’s a key part of their strategy. But as we found ([link removed]) last year, most centers are not licensed or inspected. In many states, tanning salons, massage parlors and pet stores face more scrutiny. And that puts clients at serious risk.

In the latest story ([link removed]) of our ongoing investigation into these centers, Reveal’s Laura C. Morel examined hundreds of pages of emails, cellphone photos, research papers and other materials that were included as part of whistleblower complaints made by registered nurse Susan Rames, who volunteered at a center outside Louisville, Kentucky.

Motivated by her Christian faith, Rames said she volunteered at the center because she liked the idea of helping women see “the truth and the life” inside their pregnant bodies so they might make “a better choice for themselves and their babies.” But she couldn’t ignore the red flags she spotted.

The complaints ([link removed]) detailed:
* How the center’s staff weren’t using the right lubricant gel on the probe that is inserted into a client’s vagina during an early-pregnancy ultrasound.

* Staff were using gel meant for external abdominal ultrasounds and squirting it from refillable containers that, according to ultrasound industry guidelines, might not be sterile enough for transvaginal procedures.

* Additionally, the disinfectant used to soak the probe after each examination was at one point expired by nine weeks, making it less potent and reliable.

* And Rames’ most troubling discovery was that the disinfectant staff were using didn’t kill the human papillomavirus, a widespread and potentially deadly sexually transmitted infection responsible for more than 90% of cervical cancers, as well as cancers of the genitals and throat.

After months ([link removed]) of trying to get authorities to act, Rames said she felt deflated. “It’s a public health risk. … They are doing medical procedures, but not doing it to the standard of care that you would have if you were going to your doctor or any hospital or clinic,” she said.

Less than a year after she quit volunteering at the center, one of Rames’ daughters got pregnant. Rames warned her to stay away from any pregnancy centers.

“Whatever you do,” she told her, “don’t go.”
Read the full story ([link removed])


** CONTRIBUTE TO OUR REPORTING
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Have you received services at a pregnancy center? Have you volunteered or worked at one? We’d like to hear your stories. Email reporter Laura C. Morel at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .


** DIG DEEPER
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More from our reproductive rights ([link removed]) coverage

📄 How Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers Can Claim to Be Medical Clinics and Get Away With It. Only a few states require pregnancy centers that provide medical services to be formally licensed as clinics, a Reveal investigation has found. And one Florida case shows just how little authorities are doing to regulate these centers, even when the risks to women are significant. Read ([link removed]) .

📄 Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients. The social media giant gathers data from crisis pregnancy centers through a tracking tool that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account. Read ([link removed]) .

📄 Abortion’s Last Stand in the South: A Post-Roe Future Is Already Happening in Florida. Reports of harassment, disturbance and violence outside the state’s clinics are skyrocketing, while the federal law meant to protect clinics doesn’t cover the kind of tactics that are common today. Read ([link removed]) .


** HEADLINES
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** A Reveal Take on the News
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Activists are demanding police reforms in Memphis, Tennessee, following the killing of Tyre Nichols. Two years ago, we investigated why police reforms fail, even after massive public outcries and promises of change from public officials.

In partnership with The St. Louis American and the Missouri Independent, we tracked what happened to the police reform promises that came after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson, Missouri, protests. Our reporting found a common theme ([link removed]) : The police union and its allies had stymied reform. So activists there changed their plan: Instead of trying to call for individual reforms, they tried to create a coalition that would take control of the city’s political system instead.

🎧 Listen to the podcast: Why Police Reform Fails ([link removed]) .

A federal appeals court said this week that people with domestic violence restraining orders can’t be barred from owning guns. As our 2021 investigation showed ([link removed]) , women are being killed with guns by their domestic abusers at alarming rates, despite the laws intended to keep guns out of their hands.

Now, there will be even fewer protections. The appeals court overturned its previous decision on the law after a Supreme Court ruling last year set new standards that make it more difficult to regulate gun ownership, saying any laws need to be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Theappeals court called ([link removed]) the law at issue “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”

🎧 Listen to the podcast: When Abusers Keep Their Guns ([link removed]) .


** THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
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** Inside the Global Fight for White Power
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From Russia to Sweden and the United States, there’s a growing network of White nationalist groups that stretches around the world. They’re forming alliances and helping each other create propaganda, recruit new members and share paramilitary skills.

This week on Reveal ([link removed]) , with the reporting team at the Verified: The Next Threat podcast, we go inside this global network of hate and investigate what counterterrorism officials in the U.S. are doing to stop it.
Listen to the episode ([link removed])
🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) , Spotify ([link removed]) , Google Podcasts ([link removed]) , Stitcher ([link removed]) or wherever you get your podcasts.


** INSIDE THE NEWSROOM
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** A Sold-Out Event in D.C. and Praise for ‘Victim/Suspect’ at Sundance
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** Anayansi Diaz-Cortes (from left), Omar Gómez Trejo, Maureen Meyer, Kate Doyle and Stephanie Brewer at a Jan. 26 After Ayotzinapa event in Washington, D.C. Credit: Maryam Saleh/Reveal
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Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and the National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle, the lead reporters on our After Ayotzinapa ([link removed]) podcast series, led a sold-out event about the Ayotzinapa case in Washington, D.C., in late January.

Hosted with the Washington Office on Latin America, the panel discussion included Omar Gómez Trejo, lead prosecutor in the case from 2019 to 2022, and WOLA’s Maureen Meyer and Stephanie Brewer, who spoke about the ongoing crises of forced disappearance and impunity in Mexico. Thank you to all who came out!
Our “Victim/Suspect ([link removed]) ” documentary had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival late last month. The film follows Reveal’s Rachel de Leon as she uncovers a nationwide pattern of young women reporting sexual assaults to police, only to be charged with making a false report, arrested and imprisoned.

The New York Times said ([link removed]) : “One of the nice things about documentaries, though, is that a movie can grab hold of you simply through the power of its subject. … That’s also the case with ‘Victim/Suspect,’ Nancy Schwartzman’s blood-boiler about a reporter investigating cases in which women who, after reporting their sexual assault to the police, are accused of lying, then arrested and prosecuted.”

The Hollywood Reporter’s review ([link removed]) of the film led with the headline “A Sobering Documentary Exposes the Ways Many Sexual Assault Accusers Are Railroaded” and said the film “illuminates a horrific reality that has upended many women’s lives.”

If you want to get an inside look into “Victim/Suspect,” watch TheWrap’s Sundance interview ([link removed]) with the team behind the film.

Stay tuned for more information on other festival screenings and the film’s Netflix release date!


** In Case You Missed It
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🎧 A Miracle Cure for AIDS or Snake Oil? ([link removed])

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🎧 The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires ([link removed])
This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kassie Navarro, edited by Andrew Donohue and copy edited by Nikki Frick. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend ([link removed]) . Have some thoughts? Drop us a line (mailto:[email protected]) with feedback or ideas!

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