Inside the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Crisis Pregnancy Centers

The Napa Women’s Center is an anti-abortion center — sometimes known as a “crisis pregnancy center.” Established by faith-based organizations, anti-abortion centers exist primarily to dissuade people from having abortions. Crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, are often faith-based, nonprofit organizations that provide certain care, such as pregnancy tests and limited ultrasounds, but are not licensed medical facilities.

Strategies and Proximity to Care

They often attract clients by opening in close proximity to abortion care clinics and by advertising reproductive health services, despite the vast majority operating without medical licensing. In Napa, it is no accident that an anti-abortion center operates right next to the city’s lone Planned Parenthood, in a state of uneasy tension, on one small city block. For a pregnant person seeking health care, the choice of which one to enter comes with potentially life-changing consequences.

For instance, a volunteer named Teresa Conemac talks to people approaching or exiting the clinic and gives them pamphlets featuring widely debunked claims about the dangers of abortion and birth control. At the facility next door, a visitor can take a free pregnancy test, learn about adoption agencies and pick up pamphlets that inaccurately link abortion to breast cancer, infertility, depression and death.

The Scale of the Movement

CPCs constitute the largest segment of the anti-abortion movement in the United States and vastly outnumber abortion clinics. According to various reports and research organizations, the following data highlights the scale of these facilities:

• Brick-and-mortar CPCs in the United States: More than 2,500 (with some estimates up to 3,000).
• Mobile CPC units: At least 170 in the country.
• Abortion clinics: Hovering around 800, a number that is dwindling.

Legal Oversight and Misinformation

As nonprofits that do not provide medical services or charge for care, CPCs operate in a regulatory no-man’s land, unmonitored by both consumer and medical regulators. Abortion-rights advocates and some Democratic state lawmakers say these centers peddle medical misinformation and deceive women by physically diverting them away from abortion clinics and into their centers.

Consequently, Illinois law holds crisis pregnancy centers accountable for fraud and misinformation. On July 27, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill that will provide some regulatory oversight by allowing patients to sue if they believe they were misled by a pregnancy center. This law amends the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and allows the Illinois attorney general to investigate “limited services pregnancy centers” suspected of fraud and misinformation. It subjects CPCs that violate the act to a penalty of up to $50,000.

Public Advocacy and Response

Lisa Battisfore works to educate people about CPCs through her organization, Reproductive Transparency Now, which raises awareness through public protests and community outreach. When she saw anti-abortion activists intentionally redirecting women away from abortion clinics and into CPCs, she realized there was “something really dark about what they were doing.” Furthermore, as long as California fails to regulate anti-abortion centers, advocates say, calling itself a sanctuary state won’t change a thing about that.