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How anti-abortion pregnancy centers can claim to be medical clinics and get away with it

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Patricia Henderson stood in the parking lot next to the Florida Women’s Center in Jacksonville, wearing a white lab coat and greeting patients as they emerged from their cars. Their abortion appointments, she told them, were in the flat-roofed building across the road. Once inside, Henderson handed them three pages of paperwork to fill out – questions about everything from their highest level of education to the date of their last period. State investigative documents lay out what clients say happened next: She led them to a pink-walled ultrasound room, where she would reveal their pregnancies in grainy images that, according to leading medical groups, only a licensed physician or a specially trained advanced practice nurse should interpret. Henderson told one woman that abortion causes breast cancer – a claim widely disputed by medical research. 

She informed another that she was not pregnant and just had a stomach virus.

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

How a new governor could impact reproductive policy

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If Republican nominee Mark Ronchetti wins election, he can still impact reproductive rights policy, even without being able to pass his priorities through the Legislature with Democratic majorities. Ronchetti has campaigned on an anti-abortion policy. During the Republican primary, his campaign website said he believed “life should be protected – at all stages.” In a commercial in September he said, that if elected, he would support a voter referendum on banning abortion after 15 weeks. But in July, Albuquerque megachurch pastor Steve Smothermon said Ronchetti told him privately that, if elected, Ronchetti still intended to ban abortion. Ronchetti’s campaign denied it. 

Related: Pastor says Ronchetti would seek to ban abortion

Smothermon reiterated the claim to his congregation in October, saying that “he told me exactly what I said.”

Ronchetti’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

abortion rights

Abortion fund calls for Lovelace to end relationship with a crisis pregnancy center org

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Indigenous Women Rising, an abortion fund in New Mexico, wrote an open letter to Lovelace Health Systems in Albuquerque calling on it to publicly end any relationship it has with an organization that runs crisis pregnancy centers. Care Net is a Christian-based nonprofit organization that tries to discourage pregnant individuals from abortion. Care Net runs 39 percent of the 31 CPCs in New Mexico. “These organizations have been reported by previous CPC clients to use coercive measures to pressure people out of obtaining abortions. Moreover, this extremist organization is anti-contraception, which indicates the organization does not support reproductive health options,” the letter states.

American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico

How anti-abortion activists plan to turn New Mexico into an anti-abortion state

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After the repeal of Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion activists are looking to turn public sentiment against abortion access in New Mexico,  a state where abortion is legal, abortion rights policy experts have said. Nadia Cabrera-Mazzeo, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, said that organizations involved in reproductive rights in New Mexico expected this to happen before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. “It’s a certainty and we’ve been expecting it. We knew the second Roe was overturned, [anti-abortion activists] would set their sights on New Mexico where it’s still legal to get necessary care,” she said to NM Political Report. Last week, an anti-abortion group called Southwest Coalition for Life organized a rally in a parking lot next to the future Las Cruces Women’s Health Organization.

Albert Johnson Park

Advocates, elected officials and the public respond with rallies and outrage over Supreme Court draft decision on abortion rights

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The leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the case that appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade woke up many on Tuesday to a “shocking” reality which may be imminent. Politico released on Monday a leaked draft document, dated February from the Supreme Court. The document is a majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case the court heard in early December. Because the document is still a draft, there is still opportunity for the court to rule differently in late June or early July, though it appears unlikely with the current makeup of the court. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito authored the draft, which overturns Roe v. Wade and rules in favor of the state of Mississippi in the Dobbs case.

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Crisis pregnancy centers are a public health danger, according to a report

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Crisis pregnancy centers, which have proliferated in recent years, could be a public health danger to pregnant individuals, according to a recent report. A national coalition of reproductive health experts called The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, produced a report in the fall of 2021 detailing crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which reproductive health experts often refer to as “fake clinics.”

More than 90 percent of CPCs located in New Mexico are operated by one of three Christian-affiliated organizations: Heartbeat International, Care Net, and Birthright International. CPCs offer some basic, nonmedical services for pregnant people but are intentionally designed to lure unsuspecting pregnant individuals into their offices to prevent abortions, reproductive health experts have said.  

According to the report, CPCs use “deceptive, coercive tactics and medical disinformation and misleadingly present themselves as medical facilities.”

Birthright International and Care Net did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but Andrea Trudden, vice president of communications and marketing for Heartbeat International said through an email that “many of the claims made within this report are the exact same talking points that abortion activists have put out there for decades.” She added that Heartbeat International maintains a website designed to specifically “respond to many of the claims” the authors of the report make.  

Trudden disagreed with the report’s claims and said through email that pregnancy centers adhere to a national code of ethics called, “Our Commitment of Care and Competence” (CCC), which addresses the vital importance of truthfulness in communications.”

CPCs are located in buildings or mobile units, usually near an abortion clinic in urban areas although they proliferate most often in rural counties where there is a lack of care, health experts have said. They go by a variety of different names that often appear to mimic or resemble the names of abortion care providers, according to the report. But they are not actual health clinics and most lack professional medical providers on their staff.

Abortion Access

Language, tactics used by anti-abortion movement called misinformation

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The Texas law, SB 8, that bans abortion after six weeks in that state, is called “the Texas Heartbeat Act.”

But there is no heart within the pregnant person’s womb at six weeks after conception, according to health experts. At roughly six weeks, a current of electrical activity begins in a cellular cluster. Abortion rights proponents argue that that is just one way that anti-abortion rhetoric supplies misinformation and disinformation. Anti-abortion groups also coopt the language of social justice movements, including the reproductive rights movement, reproductive rights advocates have said. Adriann Barboa, policy director for the nonprofit organization Forward Together, said some who oppose coronavirus vaccinations and mask mandates use phrases such as, “my body, my choice,” when arguing against getting vaccinated or wearing masks to protect against COVID-19.

Affordable Care Act

‘Contraception Deserts’ likely to widen under new Trump administration policy

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LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — When Nikia Jackson needed to be screened for a sexually transmitted disease, she wanted a clinic that was reputable, quick and inexpensive. After searching online, Jackson, 23, ended up at the Obria Medical Clinics’ sparkling new facility in an office park in suburban Atlanta. She was unaware that the clinic does not offer condoms or other kinds of birth control beyond so-called natural family planning methods. Religious conservatives say these types of clinics are the future of women’s sexual health care in the United States.