11. Shame, Stigma, and Lies: How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Manipulate Pregnant People
Anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers have proliferated across the country, using deceptive tactics to try and convince people not to have abortions. Increasingly, they’re receiving government funding to spread stigma and falsehoods, including medication abortion “reversal.”
Guests:
Sam Romero, We Testify storyteller
Andrea Swartzendruber, PhD, MPH, associate professor at the University of Georgia College of Public Health and co-creator of the CPC Map
Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance
Marc Hearron, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights
Logo by Kate Ryan, theme music by Lily Sloane. Photo by Robin Marty.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Garnet Henderson [00:00:01] Hey, everyone, Garnet here. Just a quick announcement before we get started. I'm very excited to share that ACCESS now has merch! So there's a whole new way, and I hope a really fun one, for you to support the show. We have T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, tote bags, phone cases, all kinds of stuff in our new store on TeePublic, which is linked in the show notes. Right now all the merch features our logo, and we also have more designs on the way soon. So keep an eye out. OK, here's the show.
Garnet Henderson [00:01:08] Welcome to ACCESS: A Podcast About Abortion. I'm your host, Garnet Henderson.
Sam Romero [00:01:14] My name is Sam Romero. And my pronouns are she/her. I'm from El Paso, Texas. I just moved to Houston, but I will forever rep El Paso. I feel like when I showed up there, at the crisis pregnancy center, it was like they were, like I was their prey, you know, like they were like ready to pounce.
Garnet Henderson [00:01:36] Crisis pregnancy centers go by many names. You may have heard them called pregnancy centers, pregnancy resource centers, pregnancy care centers, women's centers, or fake clinics. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to call them crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs. CPCs exist to convince pregnant people not to have abortions. They are usually religiously affiliated, though this isn't always clear. And in fact, some CPCs actively hide their religious affiliation. CPCs often look like small, local operations when in fact they are run by or affiliated with large national organizations. These include Heartbeat International, Birth Right, Carenet and a few others. They often advertise unbiassed all options, pregnancy counseling, even though that's not what they provide. And they also give the impression that they are medical facilities when in fact they are almost never staffed by actual medical professionals. They're also well known for using manipulative and deceptive tactics, including impersonating actual abortion clinics, lying about the supposed risks of abortion, and lying to people about how far along they are in their pregnancies. Increasingly, they are receiving government funds to do all this. A recent study from advancing new standards in reproductive health found that about 13 percent of respondents visited a crisis pregnancy center while seeking an abortion. Four weeks later, those people were significantly more likely to still be pregnant and seeking an abortion compared to people who had not visited a CPC. Sam found out she was pregnant in 2013. This is the year that Texas enacted HB two, a very restrictive anti-abortion law that shut down about half the abortion clinics in the state. Sam's abortion happened before the law went into effect, but there was still a climate of real fear and confusion. She took a home pregnancy test, but she wanted to confirm that result. So she went to a crisis pregnancy center that advertised free pregnancy testing. She didn't exactly know what CPCs were, but she did know going in that this facility was probably going to have an anti-abortion bias. It was right next to a church. So in this case, the religious affiliation was pretty clear. Sam went in alone without her partner in an effort to get in and get out more quickly. But it wasn't that simple.
Sam Romero [00:04:28] They wouldn't give me the results until we had a conversation like a counseling session, which is why later I was kicking myself like, why did I open up so much, you know? But I feel like if you're going to build a rapport like that, it has to be built on trust. But I didn't trust her. And still, I felt like I still had to offer information to get those results. And so afterwards, I did feel really gross.
Garnet Henderson [00:04:58] The promise of a free pregnancy test is a very common way that CPCs get people in their doors.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:05:06] Frequently very frequently, CPCs advertise their pregnancy tests as like medical grade, laboratory quality. In actuality, they use urine based pregnancy tests, which are basically no different, no matter where you get them, wherever you shop, where your home pregnancy test is, what they're using at the Crisis Pregnancy Center. So we had quite a few people tell us, like, yes, I had done a home pregnancy test. Yes, they were positive, but I wanted to confirm that.
Garnet Henderson [00:05:38] That's Dr Andrea Swartzendruber, a researcher at the University of Georgia College of Public Health.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:05:45] I teach and do research centered on sexual and reproductive health, and a large portfolio of my work just recently has been focused on crisis pregnancy centers.
Garnet Henderson [00:05:55] CPCs also frequently advertise ultrasound services and even prenatal care. But Andrea says this is mostly a ruse.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:06:05] Two thirds, at least in the United States of CPCs offer, what is called a limited ultrasound. And so these are ultrasound services that you not it's not what you would get if you were getting prenatal care or at a doctor's office. Right. It's not diagnostic. Basically it is, they say it's to confirm that the pregnancy is actually within the uterus. Right. But really, I've heard frequently that they use the ultrasound to kind of build attachment and try to use it as one of their tactics to dissuade people from abortion. I've heard frequently concerns about the training of people who are doing ultrasound testing within crisis pregnancy centers and if they are actually really trained or not. I mean, sometimes I see that they you know, they say that they offer prenatal care. I don't even I don't they're not in a position and don't want to have people as patients. I think that could mean and sometimes I mean, like they may be giving out like a pack of vitamins. You know, they're not in a model to establish people as patients and follow them over time.
Garnet Henderson [00:07:22] Back to Sam. She was feeling really isolated and didn't have a lot of people she felt she could talk to about her abortion, and so she opened up, she told the woman at the Crisis Pregnancy Center about her sister who'd gotten pregnant while she and Sam were still in high school. Sam had been surprised that her sister wanted to continue that pregnancy and says she'd always known that if she had an unplanned pregnancy, she would want an abortion. Sam was a little older. She had just finished college, and the woman counseling her at the Crisis Pregnancy Center said that if her sister could have a baby as a teen, then Sam was definitely equipped to have a baby in her early 20s.
Sam Romero [00:08:06] Yeah, it's not fair. When you have siblings, you know, there's a tendency for you all to be compared against each other, you know? And so for this lady to tell me, like, oh, your little sister could do it as a teenager, you definitely can do it. It's like, that's rude. I don't know. I think that was below the belt.
Garnet Henderson [00:08:28] Sam says that the people at the CPC really weren't interested in her or what she wanted to do at all.
Sam Romero [00:08:35] I'm I'm positive they did not use the word abortion. They use words like life begins at conception. But I remember in my mind thinking, like, you don't know that I'm Christian. Like, you don't know that these are my beliefs. And just being really mad at these assumptions or like words she was choosing as if to frame. Like your only option is giving birth.
Garnet Henderson [00:09:04] Sam couldn't tell whether anyone at the CPC was an actual medical professional. She says they did offer some things that a new parent would need, like diapers. But again, it was all with the goal of getting her to do what they wanted.
Sam Romero [00:09:19] I do remember they offered like couples counseling and like parenting classes. But even those it felt like those are coming through the church and like the priest or whoever runs a church as opposed to like a medical professional or like a social worker of some kind, but definitely it all felt very one sided. It was like if I was going to choose this thing with their help, then I had to fulfill like all these like checkboxes for them.
Garnet Henderson [00:09:54] Sam also felt that the people at the Crisis Pregnancy Center who were significantly older than she was, made a lot of assumptions about her.
Sam Romero [00:10:02] They thought they were helping me. I think especially like when you're young, I everyone thinks young people are not old enough to make decisions for themselves, but that's absolutely not true. And I think I always grew up feeling that way, especially because I think I look younger than I am. I might sound younger than I am. And so I think people always see me as like naive or like, oh, she doesn't know.
Garnet Henderson [00:10:32] Sam knew she wanted an abortion and she did end up getting one. But she says her experience at the CPC made her feel really bad
Sam Romero [00:10:42] leaving the CPC. I do remember pretty vividly, like I said, my partner was waiting outside for me because we knew it was like I'm going in and out. And when I came back, it was after the conversation of like, Sam, you can have a child like it's no big deal. So then I came back talking to my partner about it and I was like, hey, like, what if we like what if we just, you know, tried to do it? And he was like, Sam, like we could not really afford it right now. Like, I feel like he really grounded me and like the our financial situation, like at the time, both of us were working minimum wage jobs, we were both living with our parents, and we couldn't even afford to move in with each other like we were saving up for that. And thankfully, that's how I was able to pay for my abortion. Otherwise, like, I don't know how I would have done it. You know, like people talk talk about like these layers of oppression. And like usually it's like in the abstract, but I remember like leaving the clinic and sitting there talking with my partner. It was like I could feel all those levels. It's like, you know, this young Latina from the border, you know, of course she's going to get pregnant, of course, like she's going to have an abortion. Like, what are the statistics? It's like I was set up for that to happen from the beginning. And it was just such like an ugly feeling. Terrible to know that, like, even if I wanted to have a child in that moment like it would be something I couldn't afford, like like how? Like why, you know, and so I think from there, like after that conversation, I remember thinking, like, actually no this this abortion is like how we are paving the way to be good parents, because when we do have kids, we're going to be financially ready and emotionally ready and all these things. And I also in the moment, I promised myself and my partner that, you know, I was going to go to graduate school and get my masters because it was a goal that I had, and I actually graduated last year. And after that conversation, I think I was I was ready for my abortion. But I I did have a lot of feelings that popped up from the conversation that happened at the CPC.
Garnet Henderson [00:13:19] I asked Sam what she'd like those people at the CPC to know about her life now.
Sam Romero [00:13:24] I think I'd like them to know that, like, I'm OK. I'm super happy now after my abortion Also, I came out of my little gay closet. So I have a partner now of like five and a half years. And I love her so much. And I feel like my abortion let me explore and like be able to come out and be this, like, happy, queer. So in a lot of ways my abortion, like, really let me believe in myself, you know. And also I would like them to know that, you know, my sister, she got pregnant in high school. She has three kids now. She's a registered nurse. She's living her best life. And that's because she made the decision that was best for her like I did.
Garnet Henderson [00:14:13] CPCs often argue that they're just providing people with a different perspective, an alternative to abortion. But abortion providers say there is no comparison here,
Amy Hagstrom Miller [00:14:25] like the philosophy of a crisis pregnancy center couldn't be more different from those of us who work in abortion care services. Those of us who work in abortion clinics are all about presenting our patients with their options and with scientific information and compassionate emotional support and with an understanding of cultural context and spiritual context that a lot of people are navigating, not with this sort of a connection to an outcome of what they decide to do with their pregnancy, but really to really center that pregnant person and believe that they have all that it takes to create a path and, of course, for their life.
Garnet Henderson [00:15:02] That's Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman's Health and Whole Woman's Health Alliance.
Amy Hagstrom Miller [00:15:09] I do my best to keep nine clinics open in five different states that are focused in the Midwest and the South, where the regulations against abortion are the strongest. And we try to combat the shame and stigma that's manufactured around abortion and provide high quality, compassionate care.
Garnet Henderson [00:15:30] As someone who operates abortion clinics, Amy has seen firsthand the many tactics that CPCs use to trick people.
Amy Hagstrom Miller [00:15:39] They'll do things like have a name that's incredibly similar to the name of the clinic, right. So we've had a couple of the communities where Whole Women's Health has a clinic. They'll have like Women's Resource Center, or women's clinic or whole women's clinic, or they'll have a name like that that'll be like right across the street or right next door on purpose to confuse patients. In our McCallan clinic, we've had this crisis pregnancy center, They were like [unclear] from us and now there are two doors down from us. They got a different building. But not only do they have a name that's similar to whole women's health and they try to draw people in, they play on the fact that a lot of people in that community, English is not their first language. They may not be confident about reading information or be fluent when it comes to all the regulations around abortion in Texas. Some people come over the border from Mexico and they're preying upon those specific things in that community. They'll come and actually stand in front of our clinic on the sidewalk, which is actually public space in white coats. And they'll say things like, you need to come over to this building for your ultrasound. Right? So they are playing on like patients kind of know, oh, I have a little sound for my abortion. I think that was one of the requirements. OK, I'll go with these people. Right. So they're like preying on the fact that there's so many regulations around abortions in Texas that, like, people would believe you have to go to this building for one part of it and then you have to go to this building for another part of it, because actually it's not that far from the truth. Right. And so then they sort of trap people in the clinic and they tell them, oh, you know, they've checked into their appointment and that you're here on time. So like a lot of patients believe they're actually in our clinic. Whole women's health has a practice of calling our patients who don't come for their appointments pretty soon after they missed their appointments to help people, if they ran into a barrier, oftentimes we'll call somebody and they're sitting in the waiting room from Crisis Pregnancy Center, like, what do you mean? I just checked in. I'm in your waiting room. That's how confusing it is to patients, and they keep them there with the hopes that they're going to miss their appointment with us.
Garnet Henderson [00:17:44] So on top of all the state imposed barriers to abortion access in many parts of the country, crisis pregnancy centers are what Amy calls a rogue barrier. They're entirely unregulated.
Amy Hagstrom Miller [00:17:57] You know, they pretend they're checking somebody into a clinic, right. So they're going to check their IDs and photocopy I.D. and pretend they're making like a chart for them at a medical clinic. And in the process, they get that patient's address and then oftentimes they'll send them something afterward. Right. So even if the patient comes to us and actually does is able to get the abortion that they choose to get and that they need for their lives, they go back home and then they get this weird gift basket from the crisis pregnancy center that has like diapers and bottles and stuff because they're not legitimate health care providers, they're not obligated to comply with things like HIPA and patient confidentiality. It's incredibly unprofessional. It could actually put some patients at risk because their confidentiality is breached, might betray their their situation with their unplanned pregnancy that they're dealing with to somebody that they didn't want to know or didn't feel safe sharing that information with.
Garnet Henderson [00:18:45] A few years ago, I visited a whole women's health clinic in Austin, and Amy told a story that I want you to hear because it shows the extreme lengths that CPCs will go to in order to manipulate and deceive patients and to target real abortion providers. After Texas passed that law I mentioned earlier, HB two whole woman's health of Austin had to shut down temporarily. Whole woman's health actually challenged that law, took it all the way to the Supreme Court and won. But while they were closed, an organization that runs crisis pregnancy centers started to circle.
Amy Hagstrom Miller [00:19:25] We were trying to figure out, you know, how can we do our best to be sure that we can reopen this clinic if and when we win our lawsuit. And I turned the clinic space into a coworking space and was able to fundraise to offset some of the overhead for the for the rent and electricity and that kind of thing. And we opened up the space for use with coalition partners like the abortion funds, and they rallied ACLU and all these different organizations. We did this because there was a time when the space was going to be up for lease. And one of my staff saw Abby Johnson talking to her landlord. And Abby Johnson is former Planned Parenthood employee who flipped and went to the antiabortion side. And she was actively trying to lease the whole women's health space and made an offer to our landlord. And our landlord was very old, wonderful man, but very old. He was in his 80s. So I remember I reached out to him and I said, Abraham, is there somebody tried to lease our space? And he said, Yeah, this is really nice Christian lady. Like she offered this whole year rent up front, all this stuff. And I said, what Abraham, did she give you like an offer in writing? And he said, Yeah. And I said, Well, can you can you share it with me? Like, what does it say or whatever? And he was like, well, I don't know. It's on his letterhead that says and then there were none. Right. That's the name of her organization. And in the bottom the tagline was ending abortion in central Texas. And he was like, oh, my gosh, Amy, you know, I didn't realize this whatever. I said, Abraham, hang on. I'm going to figure out how to how to keep my lease. I think their goal was to take whole women's health flagship clinic, the first clinical women's health ever opened as we were serving as the plaintiff in one of the biggest reproductive rights cases in a generation. Right. They were trying to basically pull our flagship clinic out from under us. So we successfully, leased the space kept it open. We won the lawsuit. We reopened whole women's health of Austin, which is a great victory narrative. But then Abraham passed away and his son took over the family landlording business. And then a year down the road, our lease was up for renewal. And an anti-abortion organization, unfortunately contacted Abraham's son and offered, I believe, five years right up front. And he turned around and gave me the opportunity to do the same, and I was like, in my mind I'm like, what is my mission and what is our vision at Whole Women's Health, is my vision to get in so whack a mole back and forth, you know, real estate battle with antiabortion people. Do I want to raise five years worth of funds just to win this battle? Or do I want to say, hey, I'm going to find a new space? And so we declined to do that. And then we had to move to a new space. And that space did get taken over by an organization that initially said they were a hedge fund. And then it turned out, sure enough, they are a crisis pregnancy center.
Garnet Henderson [00:22:22] Whole Woman's Health of Boston is now in a new space with a landlord who is excited to have them there. She's not going to sell their lease to the highest bidder. But Amy still worries about the patients who might step in to that old location.
Amy Hagstrom Miller [00:22:37] Because I purchased that clinic from somebody who started a clinic in that same location in the 70s, and they had run it for years. And it wasn't a whole women's health facility, but we had a clinic that provided abortions at the same address for a super long time. And many of our patients came to us on public transportation from the east side of Austin. English might not have been their first language, didn't necessarily see the new Google website or whatever, and they would just walk in and knock on the front door and come in and tell us they needed an appointment. And so I worry about those folks still like those folks who are walking into a place that's going to deceive them, thinking it's it's a clinic where they could get a safe abortion care.
Garnet Henderson [00:23:20] Another thing this story tells us, CPCs have money. They are incredibly well funded. And a lot of this comes from private contributions. But more and more of that money is coming from the government. Here's Andrea again.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:23:36] Here in Georgia where I live. We have one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the entire country, and it is about three to four times higher among black women than it is for white women. And that and that disparity is even larger in rural areas in Georgia. Georgia also has one of the highest HIV rates in the entire country. We have extraordinarily high sti rates. So we certainly have we have health issues to deal with and problems and people who are are suffering and disproportionately burdened. Yet, our state is giving taxpayer funded money to crisis pregnancy centers
Garnet Henderson [00:24:19] In an effort to raise awareness about crisis pregnancy centers and to better understand how they operate. Andrea and Dr. Danielle Lambert created the Crisis Pregnancy Center map. The CPC map is an online geocoded directory of all the known crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. So if you're thinking of visiting a health center, you can look it up and make sure it's not a CPC. And lest you think that CPCs only operate in states that restrict abortion access, take a look at this map. There are more CPCs near you than you think, no matter where you live.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:25:00] Our goal was to kind of put more knowledge and power back into people who are who are seeking health services.
Garnet Henderson [00:25:08] The CPC map has also generated a lot of data. In fact, using that data, Andrea found that the presence of species actually predicts abortion restrictions.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:25:20] We use our two thousand eighteen data of the number of CPCs and then looked forward. And there were after that, in two thousand nineteen, there were a bunch of states that rushed to place restrictions on abortion and an outright ban abortion altogether. So we looked at is the number of crisis pregnancy centers in two thousand eighteen, does it predict the future in that the number of CPCs predict which states actually introduced those restrictions on abortion and bans? And we found we found that it did. So we definitely think that CPCs are part of kind of like the grassroots anti-abortion movement and play a role in in states where where restrictions are in place or where they're trying to introduce new restrictions.
Garnet Henderson [00:26:10] As abortion clinics have closed across the country, CPCs have proliferated. And that is no coincidence because many of the states that heavily restrict abortion access also fund CPCs.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:26:24] We found that in places and states that fund them, there are more CPCs. Right? So there are a number of states that have dedicated grant programs that provide state taxpayer funds to crisis pregnant Centers and in those states, there are more CPCs,
Garnet Henderson [00:26:46] 33 states allow people to buy license plates that say choose life, 18 of these states direct some of that money they raise to CPCs. As Andrea said, several states provide direct taxpayer funding to CPCs and some divert federal funds from programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also known as welfare. CPCs have also received funding from a federal teen pregnancy prevention program. And under the Trump administration, a few even qualified for funds from Title 10, the Federal Family Planning Program. In recent years, some CPCs have further expanded the limited medical services they offer. This makes them look more legitimate to patients, and it may help them access more government funding if they can For example, bill Medicaid for services like STI testing. Andrea has major concerns about this practice in particular, in part because CPCs oppose contraception, including condom use.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:27:54] Through out research we had seen more and more and more that centers were advertising STI services. So we did a study and basically we contacted and looked at all of the crisis pregnancy centers across the country to better understand the degree to which they offering these services. And we found that about twenty two percent offered testing for at least one sexually transmitted infection. It was only about eight percent that offered testing for HIV. Many, many fewer actually offered treatment. So there's a there's wrapped into that a number of concerns in that people who are sexually active and at risk for sexually transmitted infection should be provided condoms and should be and should be counseled to use to use condoms in that they are not doing that and maybe diagnosing folks who are positive for STIs and neglecting and in fact, refusing to promote condom use just is not in line at all with advancing people's health and in line with any of our national medical recommendations.
Garnet Henderson [00:29:12] Only five percent of the CPCs that Andrea contacted offered STI treatment, and most CPCs don't offer referrals for services they don't provide. So they're potentially diagnosing people with sexually transmitted infections, but giving them no information about treatment or safer sex practices. And Andrea says it's not just patients who need to be more informed about CPCs. Medical providers have been fooled by them, too.
Andrea Swartzentruber [00:29:44] In one of our studies, we found that health care providers often didn't know what crisis pregnancy centers are and were referring people to crisis pregnancy centers. We had one clinician in one of our studies where we interviewed people who had sought services at CPAC and she was a nurse and basically she knew she was pregnant. She had done a pregnancy test and it was positive, but she just wanted to confirm things before she paid her insurance deductible. So she went to a crisis pregnancy center and then was completely shamed and had a lot of religious discussions that she wasn't expecting and didn't want to engage in. And she told us, like I have been telling people like they have, you know you can go get diapers there. They had been referring people to crisis pregnancy centers. And she just had expressed to us a lot of regret about like I didn't know.
Garnet Henderson [00:30:46] In recent years, CPCs have also begun to promote a pseudoscientific and potentially dangerous concept called medication abortion reversal. So to review the FDA approved protocol for medication abortion involves two drugs mifepristone, a progesterone blocker and a second drug called misoprostol, taken 24 to 48 hours later. You may remember from episode three, when we talked about self managed abortion, that this second drug, misoprostol, can be used alone to cause an abortion. But mifepristone, that first drug is not typically used alone. You need to take the misoprostol afterward. The idea behind medication abortion reversal is that if someone takes mifepristone, does not take misoprostol and then takes a large dose of the hormone progesterone, that could be enough to reverse the effects of the Mifepristone This may make sense in theory, but there is no evidence that it actually works.
Mark Herron [00:31:57] Well, let me just start with the obvious, which is an abortion can't be reversed. This this theory of reversal is is based on junk science. What we know is that if patients only take mifepristone and don't take the second pill misoprostol, then a large number of pregnancies may continue. We don't know exactly how many would continue, but it could be up to half of the pregnancies may continue. So there's no evidence to think that adding progesterone after taking mifepristone changes any of the outcomes.
Garnet Henderson [00:32:35] That's Mark Hearron from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Mark Hearron [00:32:38] And my role includes leading teams that litigate to protect and expand access to abortion.
Garnet Henderson [00:32:45] The Center for Reproductive Rights is currently challenging laws in North Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee, requiring doctors to tell their patients about medication, abortion, quote on quote, reversal. All of these laws have been blocked by federal courts. None of them are in effect, but more states are introducing them. Now what does this have to do with crisis pregnancy centers?
Mark Hearron [00:33:11] There is this anti-abortion organization, Heartbeat International, that runs the medication abortion, quote on quote, reversal hotline. And they have a network of crisis pregnancy centers and other physicians and nurses who will provide progesterone to patients who call the hotline and say that they want to try to reverse their medication abortion. In fact, the Oklahoma law that we are challenging specifically requires abortion physicians to refer their patients to this anti-abortion organization's hotline, provide them the phone number and website. It's a big ethical problem for physicians, typically, if a physician is going to refer their patients to another doctor, you would want to know those doctors qualifications. You would want to know what that doctor is going to tell their patients. And you will you would want to make sure that the doctor is going to provide safe, sound health care and requiring physicians to refer their patients to anti-abortion doctors who are going to provide false medical information and could provide treatments that may, in fact, harm patients is a huge violation of those positions. First Amendment rights. I will note that heartbeat's actually did appear in our North Dakota litigation to try to defend the abortion reversal law.
Garnet Henderson [00:34:43] This is not the first time that states have directed people who are seeking abortions to crisis pregnancy centers. Thirty three states mandate some kind of counseling before abortion. And many of these states require abortion providers to tell patients things that just aren't true like that abortion could cause breast cancer. Twenty eight of these states require that written materials either be given or offered to patients. And in many cases, the phone numbers or websites of crisis pregnancy centers are included in those materials.
Mark Hearron [00:35:20] The physician patient relationship is extremely important and patients have to trust the medical advice that their physicians are giving them. And when the state steps in and interferes with that relationship and forces doctors to tell their patients something like, well, I have to now give you medical advice that the state requires me to give you, I disagree with it. That's extremely confusing for patients and it undermines that physician patient relationship, which is essential for high quality medical care. Medication abortion is extremely safe. It's extremely effective. And we also know that this reversal regimen and I use the word regimen loosely because there is no actual reversal regimen, but we know that that attempts to use a medication abortion reversal actually can be dangerous for patients. There's a clinical trial, the one clinical trial that tried to look into the safety and effectiveness of medication abortion reversal actually had to be halted because patients were having hemorrhaging from not completing the medication abortion process.
Garnet Henderson [00:36:33] Amy says this abortion reversal concept is also part of the overarching goal of crisis pregnancy centers and the anti-abortion movement as a whole, which is to stop and to stigmatize abortion.
Amy Hagstrom Miller [00:36:48] They start with sort of messaging and language, whether or not abortion reversal even is a thing which it's not medically right there planting that word into the popular culture and getting everybody to use it so that it sounds like abortion reversal is a thing. And so the more we talk about it, the more we actually start to build the concept around that it might be something that exists. Right. So then you have people wondering about it and then you have people sort of accepting almost tangentially from abortion reversal there, there's sort of an assumption of regret or an assumption that people haven't thought about their decision because I call it abortion reversal. So it's working on a psychological level in a very powerful way, even though it's not true. I think the last thing I would just add is there are many of us who work in abortion, who work in abortion because of our religious and moral convictions right. These crisis pregnancy centers don't get to claim Christianity and they don't get to sort of claim that they are the arbiters of the morals and ethics. And I think it's one of the things that fundamentally is so makes me so angry is that they they give a bad name to Christians on some level. They're using religion to hurt people.
Garnet Henderson [00:38:25] Access is produced by me, Garnet Henderson. Our logo is by Kate Ryan and our theme music is by Lily Sloane. Many thanks to today's guests. Don't forget about our new merch store. The link is in the show notes. You can also donate directly to support the show, and that link is in the notes as well. And please, if you like the show, share it with a friend. If you have an abortion story you'd like to share, you can email me at Accesspodcast@protonmail.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Access wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a rating or review so more people will find the show. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @ACCESSpod. A full transcript of this episode will be available on our website, apodcastaboutabortion.com.
