The Fake Clinics Suck Campaign: Exposing Anti-Abortion Centers and TRAP Laws

The Fake Clinics Suck campaign is a grassroots movement to defund anti-abortion centers (a.k.a. “crisis pregnancy centers” and a host of other names) in Georgia. These ideologically-driven establishments take public funding—Georgians’ tax dollars—to wrongly pose as unbiased health services, then give inaccurate and sometimes harmful information to pregnant people who are seeking support. We are shining a light on anti-abortion centers’ deceptive practices and seeking to hold them accountable. We aim to end the public funding of anti-abortion fake clinics, put a stop to their deceptive and manipulative practices, and call for Georgia to invest in real resources we really need.

The Nature of Anti-Abortion Centers

Anti-abortion centers are public-facing establishments with a primary goal of diverting pregnant people from having an abortion. They are often affiliated with national religious organizations who oppose abortion, preach abstinence until marriage, and don’t support access to birth control. Anti-abortion centers seek to intercept people seeking health care, often by placing physical locations very close to abortion clinics in order to confuse people looking for the clinic. Online, anti-abortion centers employ digital tactics to intercept people searching for abortion care.

Although many anti-abortion centers advertise or imply that they provide healthcare services, most offer a very limited set of services. They do not follow medical standards for sexual and reproductive healthcare. Almost 2/3 promoted false and/or biased medical claims about pregnancy, abortion, contraception, and reproductive health care providers. Furthermore, state-funded anti-abortion centers are even more harmful than privately-funded centers.

Georgia's Healthcare Crisis

Georgia is in the top 10 states with the greatest numbers of these anti-abortion centers. Meanwhile, due to a lack of legitimate pregnancy care providers and birth facilities in many areas, Georgia is also regularly in the worst 2 states for rates of maternal deaths per capita. Georgia must respect pregnant people’s right to make their own decisions and support them to be healthy in pursuing those decisions. When someone is pregnant or facing the possibility of pregnancy, they need unbiased information, real options, and quality healthcare for both birth and abortion, as well as access to material support for their families if they need it.

Data Overview of Anti-Abortion Centers

• National Ratio: Anti-abortion centers outnumber real abortion clinics by 3 to 1.
• Georgia Ratio: The ratio is even higher — closer to 7 to 1.
• False Claims: Almost 2/3 of centers promoted false and/or biased medical claims.
• Abortion Safety: Abortion is already 99 percent safe, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The Threat of TRAP Regulations

Over the past several years, states have been passing TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws at an alarming rate. Though the proponents of these types of laws often push for them under the guise of women’s health, it’s clear that these laws don’t make women safer. They actually put women at risk by forcing women’s health centers to shut down. And that is, in fact, the real goal of these laws: shutting down clinics and preventing a woman from getting an abortion if she needs one.

Medical experts and groups like the American Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists flatly oppose these types of laws. That is because far from making women safer, they have put women in danger by shutting down clinics and making it more difficult for women to access safe and legal abortion care. These types of laws have decimated abortion access in Texas and threaten to close clinics in Alabama, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Wisconsin, and more.