We are monitoring several updates in the unregulated pregnancy clinic (UPC) industry and reproductive and maternal health rights space this week.
- The 2024 election results were devastating for reproductive and maternal health. Although the country received largely positive results when it came to abortion ballot measures state by state, overall Tuesday’s results will prove disastrous for reproductive health care in the country. Project 2025, the far right plan to reshape the federal government and give overwhelming power to the executive branch, aims to effectively dismantle what few reproductive health protections women have left, threatening access to contraception, further rolling back access to abortion, and furthering misinformation and stigma around seeking care.
- More than a quarter of all women in the United States live within 15 miles of an unregulated pregnancy clinic. According to a study by the Journal of Medical Internet Research, UPCs outnumbered abortion clinics 3-to-1 in the United States – before the Dobbs decision that struck down the constitutional right to abortion. The NBC News article on the study states, “On average, the distance between crisis pregnancy centers and abortion facilities in the U.S. was 5.5 miles. In some areas, the centers and abortion clinics may be only doors away.”
- UPCs have problematic privacy collection practices – and HIPAA doesn’t protect women seeking their care. From Health Affairs: As part of their deception, CPCs will sometimes invoke the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to collect personal information from clients—asking clients to sign authorization forms, posting notice of privacy practices in their facilities, or describing themselves as HIPAA-compliant on their websites. CPCs are able to do this because HIPAA, which governs the privacy and security of electronic health records, has a regulatory blind spot when it comes to policing organizations that claim HIPAA compliance when they are not required to do so.
- A Texas Observer piece analyzed the post-Roe “boom” in UPCs, largely funded by taxpayers. From Andrea Grimes’ op-ed: This is the service model favored by thousands of the anti-abortion pregnancy centers across the country that operate as the public-facing front of the movement to ban abortion both at the state and federal levels. These centers, which bill themselves as judgment-free resources for “vulnerable women and youth,” often present a warm, fuzzy facade that belies a darker mission: using fear, spiritual coercion, and shame tactics to spread lies and disinformation about abortion care. Few of these centers offer medical services beyond non-diagnostic ultrasounds, though they often strive to imitate full-service women’s health clinics in the hopes of being mistaken for providers of pap smears, contraception, and abortion care or referrals. To be clear: Even those anti-abortion pregnancy centers that do provide some medical services have one primary purpose—to mislead and shame people seeking abortion care.