Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers Are Asking Patients About Religion, Past Abortions

Some time ago, a Colorado woman identified as Willow needed an abortion, she told NBC News in a Sunday report. Since she was struggling financially at the time, she unknowingly went to an anti-abortion pregnancy center—also called a crisis pregnancy center, or CPC—since they pose as abortion clinics and offer free services like pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. “One of the first things they had asked me is, what do you plan to do from here? And I told them that I plan to terminate this pregnancy,” she said. “They just told me that they advised me against this decision and showed me videos on abortion and how dangerous it was. They tried to scare me away from my decision. They pressured me into keeping it by offering their services and free supplies for raising a child.”

Inside the Colorado CPC, Willow took pregnancy tests and had an ultrasound. “They made me wait a week to get the first pregnancy test to confirm that I was pregnant, just so I could get an ultrasound. I had to then wait two weeks to get an ultrasound.” As a result of these delays, when Willow eventually tried to schedule an abortion appointment at actual clinics, she learned she was too far along and was turned away from three clinics. This is a common tactic among CPCs. According to Guttmacher Institute, most of the people who visit CPCs are young and low-income, lured by the misleading offer of free ultrasounds and other free resources. CPCs then subject them to torrents of disinformation with the end goal of convincing someone against abortion or delaying them enough to make it impossible to get one.

In May, I spoke to Moji Alawode-El, who’s currently an organizer at Abortion Access Front. But in 2003, she was a young woman in her mid-twenties seeking an abortion in New York when she unwittingly found herself at a CPC she believed was an abortion clinic. “They said, ‘We’re out of stock right now, but call us next week.’” So, she waited a week, but was told they were still out of stock and to call again next week. A week passed; she called again. They were still “out of stock.” Three weeks passed—three weeks of Alawode-El being forced to remain pregnant when she didn’t want to be.

NBC News' story also included a look inside a CPC in Idaho. Because the manipulative tactics of CPCs, from Colorado to New York, are so universal, their reporting on the information-collecting tactics of Sage Women's Center provides important insight into what’s going on behind closed doors across the country.

The watchdog group Campaign for Accountability—which is currently pressuring attorneys general in several states to investigate CPCs’ use of private medical data—obtained and shared client intake forms from the Idaho-based CPC with the outlet. The forms ask new patients a variety of non-medical, invasive questions about their religious faith, where they go to church, and even about other pregnancies and whether they’ve previously miscarried or had an abortion. “What decision would the father like you to make regarding the outcome of your pregnancy?” the form asks. “Who would support your decision if you decide to abort your pregnancy?”

NBC also reviewed internal forms that CPC volunteers and employees complete about visitors to evaluate if they’re “abortion vulnerable,” such as how the clients behaved during their visit, if they appeared sad, and if they can be scheduled for repeat ultrasound appointments—an obvious delay tactic—if they seem set on having an abortion.

“It’s not like any medical intake form I have ever seen,” Dr. Linda Prine, a family medicine provider and the founder of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline, told NBC of Sage’s intake forms. Dr. Jayme Trevino, the Darney-Landy fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told the outlet that “the level of detail being asked” is “concerning.” On its website, Sage claims it adheres to HIPAA, a federal law that protects patient privacy. Of course, most CPCs aren’t actual health care providers, so there’s no obligation for them to follow these standards. In Sage’s case, NBC reports that a close read of its privacy policy shows it claims to “voluntarily” follow HIPAA as it's not legally bound to do so. Would you entrust your private medical data—including past pregnancies and abortions—with a facility that believes that birth control and abortion cause cancer? 

Reproductive rights advocates have warned that CPCs, especially in states where abortion is banned, are “the surveillance center of the anti-abortion movement.” Susannah Baruch, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, told NBC most CPCs are part of larger anti-abortion networks like Heartbeat International, with which they share all data they collect, and “we don’t know exactly what they would do with the information.” As I’ve previously written, Heartbeat International’s Option Line chat program is used by CPCs across the country. Sage says they share “no personally identifiable information” with Heartbeat International, but I trust the word of an anti-abortion pregnancy center as far as I can throw it—even less in a climate where pregnancy increasingly goes hand-in-hand with criminal risk. 

Earlier this year, Texas reproductive justice organizer Maleeha Aziz told me about her experience at a CPC in the state over a decade ago. She felt physically trapped at the facility, where CPC workers had her sit in a room “through 30 minutes of torture watching this [anti-abortion] propaganda video,” and then proceeded to capitalize on every minute she spent at the facility to collect private information about her. “To this day, I don’t know what they used it for, if they still have it,” she said. “The whole time I was there, they kept talking to me, trying to make me feel like they’re my friends so I would tell more about myself—actual health care workers have never asked me the things they asked, like about my family, my life.” Other abortion seekers who were lured into CPCs say they were stalked and harassed by staff, sometimes for months. Some were forced to sign contracts pledging to not have an abortion before leaving the premises. 

In August, Equity Forward released a report revealing that in the two years since the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health ruling, state governments have poured close to $500 million into CPCs. The same states that have totally banned or severely restricted abortion have poured the most money into CPCs post-Dobbs. With this state funding, they’re reaching more and more people—and, consequently, collecting more and more sensitive data.