BY CARRIE N. BAKER and JENIFER MCKENNA | In the wake of the Supreme Court’s elimination of federal constitutional abortion rights established over 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, the anti-abortion movement is expanding its network of “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) designed to interfere with women’s access to reproductive healthcare using deceptive advertising; disinformation about abortion, contraception and pregnancy; and non-medical ultrasounds to persuade women to carry to term and falsely signal medical legitimacy—while collecting their personal and health information, with no privacy protections.
In response, grassroots reproductive health advocates are taking action to counter CPC disinformation and abuse by advocating for state and local laws to prohibit deceptive advertising, protect health data privacy, advance public education about CPCs, and create avenues for consumer complaints about their deceitful and dangerous practices.
In 2022, advocates in several states won passage of local ordinances against CPC deceptive advertising, including in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Somerville, Mass. New York City passed a law mandating a public education campaign about CPCs, and Columbus, Ohio, authorized “an examination into the activities of crisis pregnancy centers.”
At the state level, Connecticut passed a 2021 law prohibiting “limited services pregnancy centers” from making deceptive statements about pregnancy-related services. Following the June 2022 Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe, attorneys general and state agencies in multiple states issued CPC consumer advisories and established consumer complaint lines, including California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada and New Jersey.
In Massachusetts, which has the highest concentration of CPCs in New England, state health offices issued their own CPC warnings after Attorney General (now Governor) Maura Healey published her consumer advisory encouraging residents to file a civil rights complaint if they have concerns about a CPC experience. The state Department of Public Health now alerts consumers that CPCs are not reproductive healthcare clinics, as does the state public insurance program, MassHealth. And the state’s new attorney general has publicly pledged to protect consumers from CPCs.
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