In 2014, NARAL Pro-Choice California sent women undercover to over 25% of the state’s crisis pregnancy centers. This is what they found.
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@expose-cpcs
In 2014, NARAL Pro-Choice California sent women undercover to over 25% of the state’s crisis pregnancy centers. This is what they found.
What are CPC pages?
Crisis Pregnancy Centres are pro life centres that trick and manipulate people looking for abortions. They often give things like abortion causes cancer, and depression, as facts, and have been known to lure people in with ultrasounds then steal their clothes and refuse to give them back until they promise never to get an abortion. CPC pages are just Facebook pages of these various centres-Ash
They also help out protesters by sending their own, providing refuge for supplies, and raising money.
Exposing Fake Clinics (a page by NARAL Pro-Choice) and Expose CPCs (mine) have more information and examples.
All over the US there are billboards pointing girls in their direction. It’s so sad.
I’m sure there are some mislead places like this, however most CPC centers offer help for those who can’t afford to raise a child, show life saving alternatives to murdering the child, and some offer counseling for those suffering mentally after having had an abortion. They do great work. My family is involved with a local one called Carenet.
You mean Care Net, one of the two largest networks of CPCs in the country, which operates the misleadingly-named "Option Line" but doesn't actually provide accurate, unbiased information on all your reproductive options? The Care Net whose affiliate CPCs were exposed by a federal report as providing false and misleading information about abortion?
I'd recommend exploring this blog and learning how CPCs really operate.
if anybody has any resources on crisis pregnancy centers (specifically experiences from women dealing with Birthright International or even crisis pregnancy centers in iowa) could you send it my way??? the teacher who heads our school newspaper has been advertising a local cpc in the newspaper for the past like. four months and i want to write as informing of an email as i possibly can so she can understand what harm she’s doing
Check out this blog! There are a couple of posts on CPCs in Iowa, and more information on CPCs in general.
The [crisis pregnancy center] counselor told me that, "condoms are like a bag of balloons. You know when you get a bag of balloons and they have a lot of holes in them? Well, condoms are like that, but you can't see the holes."
Unmasking Fake Clinics: The Truth About Crisis Pregnancy Centers in California
I honestly don't even know what that counselor was trying to say.
I could always tell when a woman had just come into our clinic from the White Rose because she would be standing at our front desk crying and shaking. She would have been waylaid there, sometimes for hours, before she finally figured out she was in the wrong place and had the courage to get up and leave. In nearly 40 years of working in the field of abortion I never got over seeing that kind of trauma and I never have. I was furious and literally could not believe that this fraud was allowed.
The Wrong Door: The Terror of the White Rose and the Truth Revealed by "12th & Delaware"
On occasion we saw a woman who came for an abortion, but really didn’t want one. When that happened we did our best to refer her to whatever medical and social service resources might be available. One day a young woman we’d seen came into the clinic with her six-month-old baby. She had no money and no place to stay. We were the only place she knew to turn for help. Because we cared more for her than we did for our own righteous anger we actually called the White Rose so that they could help her with a place to stay, food, baby clothes, and all the things they had been promising women for so long. We were stunned when they told us there was nothing they could do for her.
Yahoo is now following in Google’s footsteps, banning crisis pregnancy center ads that appear when users search for “abortion clinic.” The ads, as seen in these screenshots, look like they are advertising an abortion clinic. In fact, crisis pregnancy centers do not provide abortions, and discourage people from seeking abortion. CPCs are one of many underhanded weapons in the anti-abortion arsenal, using lies and emotional manipulation to frighten people away from a legal and overwhelmingly safe option.
Investigators with the NARAL Pro-Choice New York Foundation looked at 14 crisis pregnancy center websites, spoke to 8 on the phone, and visited 10 in person. Here's what they found:
Only 25% CPCs identified themselves as pro-life on their websites. The remaining 75% either only said they didn't recommend abortion, or presented themselves as completely neutral.
CPCs offer "medical quality" pregnancy tests - the same tests you can buy over the counter - to give themselves an appearance of medical authority.
Most CPCs asked for personal information of the client and potential father, but none of them provided paperwork about confidentiality or HIPAA compliance.
Almost every CPC provided inaccurate information about abortion, inflating the health risks, linking it to breast cancer, infertility, and "post-abortion syndrome."
Knowing that abortion is banned after 24 weeks in New York, CPCs seek to delay decision-making by suggesting a client should wait to see if they miscarry, and falsely claiming they can access abortion up to 9 months of pregnancy.
All CPCs either refused to discuss birth control, or provided inaccurate information on it.
What can someone do if they fear that a CPC has exposed their personal information?
The page called What Can I Do About Them? has all the resources I've found so far on taking action against deceptive crisis pregnancy centers. One option would be to file a consumer complaint, which the National Women's Law Center can help you with.
Unfortunately, if you weren't interacting with a medical professional or the CPC you visited wasn't a medical facility, they weren't legally obligated to keep any of your information private. But if either of those are not true, and you were in a medical facility, you may have a lawsuit on your hands. The NWLC would definitely be the place to ask!
A Report on the Lies, Manipulations, and Privacy Violations of Crisis Pregnancy Centers in New York City
I'm the one who posted in the pro-choice tag about my idea for a comic strip featuring a pro-choice, feminist hero. My first strip is going to feature crisis pregnancy centers. What I would like to know is, how would the typical trip to a CPC go for someone with an unwanted pregnancy? Do you know of any personal stories, or places where I could go to look at them?
I've added a few new pages to my sidebar, and one of them is the Navigation page that lists all the tags I use. Check the #stories tag!
This is just one example of the kinds of ads anti-choice groups are running on Yahoo to trick people facing an unplanned pregnancy. Sign the petition asking Yahoo to take down ads that lie.
Because some anti-choicers have been denying this is really happening, here's a screenshot I took one minute ago:
And here's what their website has to say about abortion:
Yep, that's definitely not an abortion clinic.
Is there a way to be kept anonymous? I found your blog through another tumbler user’s post. This is my story.
In 2007, I was going through many things. I was injured on the job, I was about to lose my apartment, and I was awaiting a period that never came. I was two months late, and started having pregnancy symptoms. At first, I thought nothing of it, because I was dealing with a lot of stress at the time. But then my breasts became sore. I was falling asleep in random places. I was also extremely emotional. I knew I needed a pregnancy test, and I knew that I couldn’t ask my family for help. So I did a search online to see if there were any clinics that offered free pregnancy tests. (I figured I’d give it a try, because in my city, they give out free condoms and birth control) I found a place that was in Midtown Atlanta, called Atlanta Care Center. I called the number listed, and was immediately connected to a woman who sounded caring, and concerned about my problem. I set up an appointment, and went in the next day. The place was in this high rise right in the middle of Buckhead. I remember stepping foot in that place. It had me fooled, because it looked like a doctor’s office. The lady behind the window handed me a clipboard and told me to fill out the information. It had standard questions you would find in a real doctor’s office. Things were ok until I got about three pages into the documents. ‘What is your religion?” “What is your parent’s religion?” I skipped over them, confused, but I didn’t think anything of it. About five minutes later, I was taken to the back and handed a cup and told to pee in it, and leave it in the bathroom and to enter a room to wait for the results.
Inside the room, there was a lot of religious material. Pictures, pamphlets, etc. There was also a tv with a built in cassette player. The lady who spoke with me earlier came into the room, and said I need to watch a video before I can see my results. Which is bullshit, because a pregnancy test doesn’t take hours to give you results. She pops in the video, and leaves the room. It was a pro-life anti-abortion video. I couldn’t watch all of it…
About 10 minutes later, the lady came into the room asking me what was my opinion on the video. I remember feeling disgusted, and misled. I couldn’t say anything, because at that moment, I felt horrible that a place would use a “clinic” to scare women into not having abortions during a vulnerable time in their lives. I wasn’t interested in having an abortion. I just was upset that these people were trying to force their views on others.
25 minutes into my visit, I still was not given my results. The lady had my documents I signed earlier in her hand, and started asking me about my answers. She spoke about ovulation, and other pregnancy related topics briefly before turning to religion. “You put down you don’t have a religion. Do you not believe in God, or the fact that Jesus died for your sins?” I was still thinking about the little bit of the video I was able to watch before crying and staring out of the window. I asked her what religion had to do with a pregnancy test? She started going on about how God knew me when I was in my mom’s womb, and that if I were pregnant, he would know my child as well. I got up to walk out of the room, but she told me that she would just give me the test results. She left the room, came back with the test, and told me I was pregnant. I was in complete shock. I had to go through all of this trouble to get “counseling”, which ended up being nothing more than a religious person trying to make me only consider having a baby, instead of an abortion. I quickly left the clinic. This is their website http://www.atlantacare.com/.
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You're right, a pregnancy test only takes a few minutes. Many crisis pregnancy centers claim to use "lab-quality urine tests," but they're no more reliable than pregnancy tests you can get at the drugstore. They offer them so they can do exactly what they did to you.
Thank you for writing this, and I'm so sorry you had to go through it. I hope you got the help you needed.
NARAL Pro-Choice California investigated anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers in their state. The majority of these centers are unlicensed and unregulated. Though there is a push to add medical professionals and licensing for an appearance of legitimacy among CPCs, there is still no guarantee they would offer accurate information.
For the truth about these myths, read Common Lies Told By CPCs.
This comes from Women's Care Medical Center in Robertsdale, Alabama.
The National Cancer Institute, both the American and Canadian Cancer Societies, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have all stated that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. But as long as anti-abortion scientists keep publishing or manipulating other studies' results to get what they want, crisis pregnancy centers continue to use the false link to scare clients away from choosing abortion.
The only medical services this CPC provides are ultrasound, over-the-counter pregnancy tests, and pregnancy and medical "consultations." Given this so-called medical center is pushing junk science refuted by all major cancer and OB/GYN organizations, the accuracy of their consultations is up for debate.
North Penn Pregnancy Counseling Center is a CPC
My Choice North Penn (powered by Enlightened Woman) is a fake clinic in Lansdale, PA that is really, really trying to look legitimate. But when you read their FAQs about abortion they have some really pretty lies there, like
Q: What are the health risks to having an abortion? A: Risks of any surgical abortion include hemorrhage, infection, infertility, and complications with future pregnancies (i.e. incompetent cervix).
Q: If I have an abortion, will my baby feel pain? A: Because circumstances vary, the answer to this question will depend both on the stage of fetal development and method of abortion performed. It has been determined that at about eight weeks a fetus can feel pain. It is at this point in development that the following necessary structures are in place: sensory nerves (which detect pain), the thalamus (part of the brain that receives pain message from sensory nerves), and motor nerves (which are directed by the brain to pull away from the hurt). In addition, by 13 1/2 to 14 weeks, the entire body surface, except for the back and the top of the head, are sensitive to pain.
They also have a whole page devoted to “whether or not you’re planning on giving the baby up for adoption”, and promise pregnant women who visit their site that “You may not need an abortion at all! 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage…” so, why not just wait it out and hope it terminates itself, I guess?
They’re listed in the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation’s directory of “pregnancy resource centers”, just in case we needed any more proof that they’re pro-forced-birth.
If you find out you’re pregnant and you want an abortion, do not go here unless you really want to be lied to. These places are dangerous to women and their mental/emotional well-being.
Stay safe, lovelies.
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Thank you! They also say that abortion is a procedure to "effect fetal demise," which is a purposely incomplete description. They go on to describe medical tools as "knifelike" and "pliers-like" to discredit the legitimacy of the procedure and the physicians performing it, and invoke fear in people considering abortion.
There are risks to abortion, just like every other medical procedure, but they are minimal - a less than 0.05% chance of complications that might require hospital care.
Somehow, CPCs always manage to leave the most important information out. I wonder why?
Los Angeles Pregnancy Services, a crisis pregnancy center in California, is doing a couple of things here. Both of these points seek to delay people from making a decision about their pregnancy. If abortion is someone's choice, the longer they wait, the more expensive and risky the procedure becomes. They also risk waiting too long and running into state bans on abortions after a certain time in the pregnancy.
The first point preys on the anxieties of people who think they're pregnant. By telling them they could miscarry, those who don't want to give birth may wait, putting off their decision until it's too late. Indecision, denial, and hopes of something just "working out" are not uncommon reasons for later abortions.
The second point serves to lure people into anti-abortion centers that offer free ultrasounds. Once inside, clients may be subject to a barrage of lies, manipulations, and privacy violations designed to prevent them from having an abortion. There's also no guarantee that the person operating the ultrasound is qualified to use it, and the results may not qualify in states that require ultrasounds before an abortion.
NARAL Pro-Choice America has successfully campaigned for the removal of ads for “crisis pregnancy centers” that falsely advertised abortion services.
Go Google!
This is good news. Misleading advertisements are one of CPCs' most effective tactics. In 2011, an anti-abortion group was caught buying up ad space on Google to make their ads the first thing you'd see when searching for "abortion" in certain cities.