Women facing unplanned or unwanted pregnancies must wade through a morass of bureaucratic regulations and hurdles when they consider abortion. Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) specialize in making the process even more difficult. These fake clinics, sometimes called pregnancy resource centers, lure women in with a promise of a pregnancy test or abortion, then expose them to anti-choice propaganda. Some continually promise a free or discounted abortion or other service if the woman will just wait one more day, one more week, one more month.
By the time the woman realizes what’s happening, it may be too late for her to get a safe, legal abortion. The outrage doesn’t end there, though. Because crisis pregnancy centers are not medical facilities, they are not governed by HIPAA regulations that protect patient privacy. Yet women visiting these “clinics” think they are real medical providers. So they provide a wide range of data about themselves, their families, their medical history, and other confidential data—such as a history of rape or thoughts of suicide.
CPCs may then share this information with third parties, or use it to intimidate women.
How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Use Health Information to Intimidate Women
The experience often goes something like this: a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy searches for Planned Parenthood or a discount clinic to get a pregnancy test and explore options. CPCs pretend to be abortion clinics, and Google doesn’t penalize them for doing so. In fact, they may rank above real clinics in searches. So women end up at these clinics thinking they’re getting medical help. Instead, women are subjected to a barrage of frightening anti-choice propaganda. They are told that abortion can kill them or cause breast cancer, or that all of the local abortion clinics are dangerous and dirty.
When women persist in their desire for an abortion, the clinic may turn on them. A Rewire investigation into the CPC conglomerate Life Dynamics untangled a bizarre web of intimidation. Life Dynamics gave women who came to its clinics a document claiming the women had waived their right to a legal abortion. For some women, this might have been enough to deter them. But for others, this bogus legal document was just the beginning.
Life Dynamics—and possibly other clinics like it—allegedly used the confidential health information it obtained on a 17-year-old to continually intimidate her and her family. The company is accused of making anonymous phone calls to clinics, doctors, and law enforcement officers. This culminated in police showing up at a Mississippi abortion clinic where the girl sought an abortion.
There are other stories of similar abuses by other clinics. They may sell women’s information to third parties, give it to anti-choice activists, or even contact women at home or work. And because these clinics don’t have to follow HIPAA regulations, women have no recourse when CPCs invade their privacy.
How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Target the Most Vulnerable Women
CPCs are not indiscriminate. Research consistently shows that they target the most vulnerable women. According to the National Women’s Law Center, these facilities often target women of color. Women of color are disproportionately affected by myriad cultural issues that play a role in the decision to seek an abortion—rape, poverty, abuse, and incarceration. So the effects of CPCs on this community may be particularly onerous, particularly when a crisis pregnancy center successfully prevents a woman from seeking an abortion.
Anti-Choice Stalking
Research consistently shows that most Americans support legalized abortion. Anti-choicers are losing the culture wars. They’ve responded by trying to intimidate women. Using confidential health information is just one weapon in their arsenal. In addition to dozens of draconian anti-choice laws, the far right has a new tactic: so-called geofencing.
Geofencing creates a virtual fence around a location, which can then be used to access individual phones that have turned on location tracking. Anti-choicers are increasingly using this strategy to send anti-abortion messages, threats, and propaganda to women at abortion clinics. This decidedly modern form of clinic protests requires little effort, but sends a clear message to women considering abortion: we will find you, and we will threaten you.
In a world where clinics are bombed, doctors are murdered, and the president thinks women seeking abortions should be punished, it makes sense for women to be intimidated by anti-choicers. All too often, these threats are not hollow.
