THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• A whistleblower’s complaints 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.
   
• Updates from our After Ayotzinapa event in D.C. and our documentary premiere at Sundance.

NEW

This Nurse Wanted to Help Women Avoid Abortions. Then She Saw Infection Control Problems at a Crisis Pregnancy Center.

Registered nurse Susan Rames. Credit: Jon Cherry for Reveal

Anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers look and act like medical clinics. It’s a key part of their strategy. But as we found 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 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 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 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.”

CONTRIBUTE TO OUR REPORTING

HEADLINES

A Reveal Take on the News

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: 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.

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, 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.” The appeals court called the law at issue “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”

🎧  Listen to the podcast: When Abusers Keep Their Guns.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

Inside the Global Fight for White Power

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, 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.

INSIDE THE NEWSROOM

A Sold-Out Event in D.C. and Praise for ‘Victim/Suspect’ at Sundance

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

Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and the National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle, the lead reporters on our After Ayotzinapa 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!

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