Designed to Deceive CPC Study

Urgent Update! CPCs Serve as Surveillance Tool for Anti-Abortion Movement

On February 15, 2022, Gender Justice, along with our The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality partners released an urgent warning about the role the crisis pregnancy center (CPC) industry is poised to play in a post-Roe United States – as a surveillance tool for the anti-abortion movement.

Our new cover report exposes how CPCs, which are generally not medical facilities and therefore do not need to comply with medical privacy laws, are collecting sensitive medical and personal information from pregnant people and quietly funneling it to anti-abortion organizations. Investigations reveal CPC client data is collected and stored in a proprietary anti-abortion movement platform designed to function as one mega-database that “serves the whole movement.”

Click here to read the new cover brief

Our report uncovers a crisis for pregnant Minnesotans.

Crisis pregnancy centers, or “CPCs,” are anti-abortion organizations that target pregnant people with predatory, deceptive marketing. Their main function is to attract and intercept Black, brown, Indigenous, and low-income people before they access abortion care. 

Their goal is ideological, not medical: They want to prevent pregnant people from obtaining abortion services using any means necessary, including by using delay tactics, disinformation, and deception. And in Minnesota, CPC’s are funded to the tune of 3.5 million dollars per year or 7 million per biennium.

“Even in the middle of a massive maternal mortality crisis, anti-abortion legislators would rather fund fake clinics than provide their pregnant constituents with desperately needed resources,” said Megan Peterson, Executive Director at Gender Justice.

“They don’t do this because it’s better for pregnant people and their families, but because it serves their ideology. That is the extreme position in this conversation.”

 

The report shows that, rather than offer legitimate healthcare and resources, CPCs target pregnant people of color and pregnant people with lower incomes with deceptive marketing; provide few or no real medical services; and systematically mislead clients about services they do provide, potentially resulting in delayed care and unnecessary risks to their clients’ health.

It also recommends legislative solutions to hold CPCs accountable and expand healthcare options for pregnant Minnesotans.