FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 9, 2015
[email protected]
Today, NARAL Pro-Choice America has released a new report that documents how crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) use deceptive practices to lure pregnant women to their facilities in an effort to deny them access to a full range of health care services, including abortion. Their tactics include targeted and misleading advertising, maintaining the illusion of being real medical clinics providing real medical information, and in some states, receiving the veneer of legitimacy through state funding and mandated referrals.
“Pregnant women absolutely need objective, accurate information and superior services in order to make the best decision. Crisis pregnancy centers offer the exact opposite of that,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “These institutions are driven by a desire to limit women’s options and to do whatever it takes to keep all women from choosing abortion. They lie, they scare, they humiliate. This report shows that these are in no way medical institutions and everyone deserves to know this before they walk into a CPC.”
The main findings of this report include:
- Crisis pregnancy centers lie to women. Many investigators were told that abortion clinics are unlicensed and dirty, and that abortions can potentially cause breast cancer, cervix incompetence, infertility, and negative effects on women’s mental health. The CPCs provide false information about birth control and lie to women about how long they have to make the decision to receive abortion care.
- Government money is used to help fund crisis pregnancy centers. Eighteen states use license plates and other tax revenues to fund dangerous CPC’s whose sole mission is to lie to women.
- Crisis pregnancy centers use targeted advertising to lure in women of color. A report from Colorlines.com exposed a plan by CPCs to deliberately set up shop in these communities to go after vulnerable women and deny them the reproductive care and honest information to which they have a right. These calculated campaigns designed to mislead and deceive women about their health care options, have no place in our society.
Crisis pregnancy centers are a danger to women’s reproductive health and rights. Not only do they lie to women about the risks associated with birth control and abortion, they do not give women accurate information about all the medical options available.
###