States Try to Rein In Crisis Pregnancy Centers

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling last year ending the national right to abortion, an increasingly large number of states have passed or are introducing legislation to regulate the “crisis pregnancy center” industry, which abortion advocates say is foundational to the larger anti-abortion movement. 

Last week, Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation that will penalize crisis pregnancy centers, run by anti-abortion groups, for  “using or employing” false or misleading information as a way to prevent individuals from getting abortions or accessing emergency contraception. Vermont passed a similar law in May requiring crisis pregnancy centers from using “false and misleading advertising about services.” 

Although the laws in both Illinois and Vermont are currently being challenged by the anti-abortion organization the National Institute of Family and Life (NIFLA), the legislation is representative of a larger trend in state legislatures across the country to introduce measures to restrict crisis pregnancy centers, which have been largely unregulated. 

“It's [the introduction of these bills] evidence that policy makers are really paying attention to the crisis pregnancy center threat and working to address it,” Jenifer McKenna, co-founder of the California Women’s Law Center, said. “I'm encouraged that there's a real recognition among lawmakers and policymakers and media representatives investigating this whole post-Roe reality.”

In an email to The Messenger, Anne O'Connor, vice president of legal services at NIFLA, said that the organization exists to “empower and protect pro-life pregnancy centers and medical facilities.” 

“When radically pro-abortion states pass laws that negatively target our pregnancy center members, purposely trying to impair their ability to reach and serve women facing unexpected or unsupported pregnancies, we go to battle on their behalf,” O’Connor added. “We advocate for our centers so that they can stay focused on their primary mission of helping women and their families with essential free services such as medical services, baby items, diapers, parenting classes, and a multitude of supportive services.”

The reason there has been such a heightened effort at the state level to regulate this industry, said Carly Thomsen, a professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Middlebury, is partially because crisis pregnancy centers will have an outsized impact in places where abortion is illegal as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 verdict in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health.

“People are really concerned about the consequences of crisis pregnancy centers” she said, “especially when there are no abortion facilities to counter the misinformation that they're providing.”

These centers, typically run by non-profit religious organizations, have been regularly criticized for disseminating misinformation on sexual and reproductive health issues, and for employing deceptive and coercive measures to prevent women from accessing abortions. They have also been documented as misleadingly presenting themselves as medical clinics, and often appear to exist as standalone operations, but are actually backed by significant funding and larger anti-abortion groups. 

It’s for this reason, abortion advocates say, that legislation to monitor these centers, specifically in a post-Dobbs landscape, is so crucial. 

“People are paying attention to these things that previously seemed maybe innocuous, and now people are realizing that they're not,” explained Thomsen. “But I think that the most important thing to realize about crisis pregnancy centers is that they are the foundation of the anti-abortion movement—they are the way in which the anti-abortion movement has worked to insidiously circulate anti-abortion sentiment and to do it under the guise of helping women.”

In response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Colorado passed a bill in April 2023,  prohibiting deceptive practices by crisis pregnancy centers. The measure “makes it a deceptive trade practice for a person to make or disseminate to the public any advertisement that indicates directly or indirectly, that the person provides abortions, emergency contraceptives, or referrals for abortions or emergency contraceptives when the person knows or reasonably should have known that the person does not provide those specific services.”

Similarly, New Jersey introduced a bill in February 2022 that prohibits crisis pregnancy centers from disseminating false or misleading information under the state’s Consumer Fraud Act. The legislation is currently stalled. 

Massachusetts also introduced a bill to prevent crisis pregnancy centers from “deceptive” advertising in February 2023. Earlier this month, the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure held a public hearing on the bill, and 23 crisis pregnancy supporters testified against the legislation arguing that the bill violates free speech and uses discriminatory language. 

Kentucky Democratic State. Rep Sarah Stalker introduced a bill earlier this year that would require the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to set up licensing standards for crisis pregnancy centers and establish standards for sanitation, staffing qualifications, and, among other things, infection control procedures.

And attorney generals in California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey have all issued consumer alerts following the Dobbs decision, warning against the dangers of crisis pregnancy centers. “CPCs [crisis pregnancy centers] do NOT provide comprehensive reproductive healthcare. CPCs are organizations that seek to prevent people from accessing abortion care,” reads a July 2022 advisory from the Massachusetts attorney general’s office.  

Although there have been significant strides in the introduction or enactment of new legislation, there’s a long road ahead. 

The crisis pregnancy industry, represented by what McKenna describes as an “ecosystem of big right-wing law firms” is challenging almost every regulatory measure that has been passed. “As accountability measures are beginning to be passed at the state level,” she said, “this ecosystem of big right wing law firms is representing CPCs [crisis pregnancy centers]  in almost every accountability measure that comes up.”

In Vermont NIFLA, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy non-profit that launched a legal challenge against the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion medication mifepristone.

And in the case of Illinois, NIFLA, represented by the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based conservative Catholic public interest law firm that has been involved in efforts to delegitimize the results of the 2020 presidential election, filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that the law “tramples the free speech and religious exercise rights of pro-life pregnancy help centers.” 

Becket Law, a conservative non-profit legal organization based in Washington D.C. pursued a legal challenge against the Colorado Attorney General in April of this year,  arguing that the state’s law banning clinics from providing abortion pill-reversal, “targets clinics that have a religious duty to help all pregnant women in need, including those who decide to continue their pregnancies after willingly or unwillingly taking the abortion pill.”

First Liberty, another conservative non-profit legal organization dedicated to defending religious freedom, wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healing in September 2022, in response to a consumer advisory warning against the harms of crisis pregnancy centers, specifically in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. “Rather than protect these faith-based organizations providing professional reproductive health services, as is the duty of your office, your letter has placed them in further jeopardy” the letter says.

Despite the pushback, McKenna is encouraged that there seems to be a “real recognition of the role crisis pregnancy centers” play in the anti-abortion movement.