When someone goes to the doctor’s office to get a diagnosis or treatment, they expect to get accurate and expert information from a licensed professional.
But imagine there were clinics out there that gave incorrect or misleading information on how to treat diabetes, cancer, or other medical conditions.
In Arizona, women have to contend with this very issue at so-called “crisis pregnancy centers.” They operate as medical facilities and target people seeking abortions, by buying space at the top of Google search results for abortion services, and by setting up misleading “clinics” near actual clinics that provide reproductive health care. Their goal is to persuade women to not get an abortion—or to delay care for those seeking an abortion until it’s too late.
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“The problem is that these places are often not medically licensed facilities, and they often don’t have medically trained staff,” said Planned Parenthood Arizona’s director of health center operations Cassandra Aguirre.
Nationally, there are over 2,600 crisis pregnancy centers, and over 40 in Arizona. These centers are linked to anti-abortion nonprofits, and 71% of crisis pregnancy centers advertised on Google search use deceptive advertising.
Misleading practices
“They do not provide all of the options or counseling that patients need,” Aguirre said. “They completely omit abortion care and contraception from all of their education.”
Aguirre said many times these centers will market free ultrasounds and free pregnancy tests, and that will make patients go into the centers thinking they can talk about their options with a medically licensed person. It isn’t until well into their appointment or even weeks later that they come to understand an abortion isn’t available there.
Crisis pregnancy centers will often set up shop very close to a licensed abortion provider to confuse potential patients.
“I know that in our East Valley [locations] near Mesa and Tempe, we have crisis pregnancy centers in the area,” Aguirre said.
And Aguirre noted that patients will come into Planned Parenthood after being deceived by a crisis pregnancy center. She said it has happened many times.
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It’s not just that crisis pregnancy centers are ideologically and politically opposed to abortions, it’s that they do not tell patients what their options are—and since they aren’t delivering medical care, they aren’t regulated as medical facilities. That means no one is checking on whether they offer up partial truths or lies.
“The quote-unquote education that [crisis pregnancy centers] provide doesn’t seem to be medically accurate at all,” Aguirre said. “Oftentimes our patients are just feeling so upset that they weren’t given information about abortion care or contraceptive care.”
It might seem harmless for people who know these aren’t real medical facilities and just want to go get a free pregnancy test or ultrasound, but for a woman who’s frantically looking for help ending an unwanted pregnancy, these deceptive centers can lead to delays in care that they can’t afford.
“It causes real harm in the community, especially right now when so many people don’t have access to the facilities they used to be able to go to for Medicaid,” Aguirre said.
President Donald Trump and Republicans at both a federal and state level have sought to “defund” Planned Parenthood due to an ideological opposition to abortion.
It’s an attack on health care, similar to how Republicans’ unwillingness to negotiate on expiring health care subsidies led to a government shutdown.
Aguirre said she’s just focused on telling the truth to patients and making sure they get the care they deserve.
“I think our best response to [crisis pregnancy centers] is really just showing what great patient care looks like and providing accurate, informed health care so that people can make the best decision for themselves,” she said.
