New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and 15 other Democratic Attorneys General signed an open letter in support of the online platform Yelp in its efforts to provide accurate information about crisis pregnancy centers listed on the online platform.
Aletheia Allen, solicitor general for the New Mexico AG office, said the letter was intended to bring information to the public, similar to the information Yelp is providing on its platform that CPCs listed on the platform do not provide abortion.
Yelp is currently involved in a lawsuit over its information. Allen said Yelp initially placed a disclaimer on its platform that CPCs may not have medical health professionals or a full panel of services available. But, she said the state of Texas argued that Yelp could not make that claim, so the platform changed the language to say that CPCs do not provide abortion services or abortion-related services.
A Yelp spokesperson said by email that the company is “heartened to see the open letter signed by 16 State AGs supporting our efforts to protect consumers who search for reproductive health services from the potential of being misled or confused.”
Allen said Yelp and the state of Texas are now involved in litigation. She said Yelp is arguing that the platform’s First and Fourteenth Amendments rights are being violated. The state of Texas is arguing that Yelp is discriminating against CPCs.
The open letter, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, states that the 16 Attorneys General, “oppose efforts by CPCs to mislead consumers and delay or impede access to the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare, including abortion.”
“We applaud efforts to ensure the public is aware of what services are and are not offered at CPCs so that patients can get prompt access to reproductive healthcare and reproductive health information from a provider that offers the services they seek. Actions like Yelp’s warnings to consumers help inform patients and prevent these harms, protecting the public health,” the letter states.
A national coalition called The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality produced a report in 2021 detailing CPCs in several states, including New Mexico. Southwest Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit based in Albuquerque, was involved in that research.
Related: Crisis pregnancy centers are a public health danger, according to a report
As of June of this year, SWWLC found that of the 36 CPCs in the state, six had closed, two had recently opened and one was opening in the near future.
The open letter states that CPCs outnumber clinics that provide abortions by three to one. The letter also states that anecdotal evidence suggests that when CPCs have licensed medical staff, they are not necessarily reproductive healthcare professionals but healthcare professionals trained in other areas, such as chiropractic medicine or optometry.
Allen said part of the problem with CPCs is that they market to individuals who are lower income and may not have regular access to medical care. Given the fact that around 80 percent of births within the state are Medicaid covered, that means many in the state are potentially vulnerable to CPCs.
“CPCs pull people in by appealing to their fear,” Allen said.
She said that, anecdotally, she has heard of someone who visited a CPC and was told that if she terminated her pregnancy with an abortion, she would have a 400 percent chance of developing breast cancer.
“That is obviously incredibly false,” Allen said.
Allen said that CPCs could also be telling patients over the phone that they can receive an abortion at a CPC but avoid advertising the claim since it is not valid.
CPCs are able to operate because they are generally listed as nonprofit organizations, not as medical facilities that require licensure by state boards. Allen said Torrez’s office has an open investigation into the legality of CPCs.
“Anybody trying to claim to provide healthcare services when they’re not and causing a lot of harm is dangerous regardless of the state of the law,” she said.
