Key Point: “[Crisis pregnancy centers] pose as harmless community resources and licensed women’s health clinics in need of public support. They are, in fact, part of a multi-billion-dollar industry that is directly tied to the extremist legal and advocacy groups that overturned Roe and are now going after medication abortion, contraception, IVF and no-fault divorce. … The new administration and Congress are poised to make this grim reality worse: by massively boosting the flow of federal taxpayer dollars to unregulated pregnancy clinics.”

Ms. Magazine: Trump and His New Republican Congress Will Make *All* U.S. Taxpayers Fund Unregulated Crisis Pregnancy Clinics

By Jenifer McKenna

• While serial attacks on abortion rights seize the headlines, the anti-choice movement has quietly built an on-the-ground network of unregulated pregnancy clinics—also known as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) and antiabortion centers (AACs)—that is eroding access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare and electioneering against abortion rights, mostly under the radar and increasingly on the public dime.

• CPCs pose as harmless community resources and licensed women’s health clinics in need of public support. They are, in fact, part of a multi-billion-dollar industry that is directly tied to the extremist legal and advocacy groups that overturned Roe and are now going after medication abortion, contraception, IVF and no-fault divorce.

• Not only are CPCs entirely ill-equipped to deliver maternal healthcare, their unlicensed practice of medicine, trafficking of medical disinformation, and unguarded collection of sensitive personal health data actually threaten women’s health and safety. Yet, in more and more communities, unregulated pregnancy clinics are the only resources available to pregnant women and teens, as maternal care deserts proliferate nationwide. 

• The new administration and Congress are poised to make this grim reality worse: by massively boosting the flow of federal taxpayer dollars to unregulated pregnancy clinics.

• Crisis pregnancy centers are not medical clinics; they are unregulated religious nonprofits, run by antiabortion advocates. They are not regulated by any of the health, safety, licensing or privacy standards that govern medical offices. Yet these unregulated groups increasingly claim to offer health services. 

• Only one in the 607 CPCs studied offered contraception, and only 5 percent offered prenatal care.

• Another serious concern: While masquerading as medical providers, unregulated pregnancy clinics are collecting vast amounts of personal and health information from pregnant people, with no privacy protections. CPCs claim to keep client information confidential; many even lie about being HIPAA-covered. But CPCs are not governed by medical privacy laws and not accountable to anyone for keeping client data private. 

• While CPCs are advertising medical services, there is no evidence they are providing pregnancy or maternal healthcare, let alone reducing maternal and infant mortality. Notably, CPCs don’t come close to meeting Level 1 requirements for “Basic Maternal Care” in the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologist models of maternal care for pregnant women. And CPCs provide no infant or neonatal services.

• It is the states with the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality, and the abortion bans deepening the pregnancy and maternal health care crisis, that fund the CPC industry. Politicians in these states fund unregulated pregnancy clinics for one purpose: to advance an antiabortion agenda.

• And research from Reproductive Health & Freedom Watch (RHFW) shows that while CPC industry funding is increasing overall, state taxpayer funding is increasing even faster. In a July 2024 analysis, RHFW found that 21 state legislatures allocated over $513 million to CPCs between 2019 and 2022—with seven states creating new CPC funding programs—and that state funding mushroomed by a stunning 78 percent after the 2022 Dobbs ruling.

• Why did it cost the CPC industry over $1.5 billion to produce less than $370 million in value in 2022? And why have CPC expenditures almost doubled since 2019 when the industry’s own reporting indicates no increase in demand for its services?

• This wholesale lack of accountability is especially striking in the face of mounting evidence of CPC mismanagement, fraud, waste, and illegal use of public funds, including for religious purposes. Even more striking, in the wake of blockbuster exposes of fraudulent use of taxpayer dollars and overbilling by CPCs in multiple states, anti-choice lawmakers have actually boosted public funding while also voting down proposals to tie that funding to stronger fiscal oversight and transparency, licensing and privacy standards, tracking whether CPC clients access prenatal care, and other baseline accountability measures.

• Between 2010 and 2022, over 500 maternity wards closed across the U.S. and the 2022 Dobbs decision has driven scores of maternal and fetal care providers out of abortion-banning states, worsening maternal care deserts and already catastrophic rates of maternal and infant mortality in this country.