Stopping President Trump’s Federally-Funded Phony Health Clinics
By Jesse Mermell
The term “Crisis Pregnancy Center” sounds innocuous, especially when coupled with a name like “Women’s Health Center” or “Your Options.” But that’s how they get you. Crisis Pregnancy Centers are actually fake women’s health centers pushing anti-abortion agendas.
The harm done by these fake women’s health centers is little known outside of the reproductive freedom movement. They target people of color and low-income people and often set up shop next to legitimate reproductive health care clinics to confuse patients. They don’t offer a full range of reproductive health care services, like hormonal birth control, and they use misinformation and intimidation to pressure women and trans people out of making their own decisions about abortion care. They often are owned by religious organizations with anti-abortion agendas, although they either don’t disclose or obfuscate the affiliation or agenda.
Here in the Massachusetts Fourth Congressional District – a solidly Democratic district – there are three fake women’s health centers. They’re in Attleboro, Taunton and Fall River which are, you guessed it, cities with lower median household incomes than the rest of the district and with large immigrant populations.
The Attleboro center is called Attleboro Women’s Health Center and was located next door to a legitimate low-cost family planning clinic. The legitimate facility closed in 2017 but the fake women’s health center remains. It’s owned by Abundant Hope, a religious anti-abortion organization that’s registered at the same address, an affiliation it keeps publicly hidden. The Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts once described Attleboro Women’s Health Center as “one of the most egregious cases of deceptive rebranding of a CPC I can personally remember seeing in over a decade of advocating for reproductive freedom.”
How do these deceptive facilities get their funding? Thanks to Donald Trump, some of them now get money from the federal government. While Trump denies Title X funding – funds allocated by the federal government since the Nixon administration to provide family planning services to low-income people – to legitimate family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood, he is funneling that very funding to some of these fake clinics. It’s unacceptable that the federal government is restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care while propping up anti-abortion centers that use deception and scare tactics to push their radical anti-choice agendas.
As a former Planned Parenthood leader, I won’t stand by while people in my district are subject to manipulation and misinformation when trying to access health care services. As COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted people who menstruate and reopenings have largely failed to account for pressing childcare needs (the burdens of which still fall mostly on women), we have to be unyielding in our commitment to defending access to accurate, reliable and comprehensive reproductive health care. It’s an economic justice issue. It’s a racial justice issue.
That’s why my reproductive rights plan – which I announced in front of Attleboro Women’s Health Center in February – calls for blocking federal funding from going to fake women’s health centers. I’m running in a crowded Democratic primary but I’m the only one of nine candidates talking about this critical issue impacting our district.
Too many people assume abortion rights are secure, particularly in a deep blue district in a deep blue state. But I’ve seen this movie before and I know this is no time for reproductive rights to be a back burner issue. That’s why even in liberal Massachusetts, this is one of my top priorities. With three fake women’s health centers for every one legitimate provider in Massachusetts, we have an obligation to take action on this – immediately.
There are more than 4,000 fake centers like this across the country and in at least 12 states, they receive state funding, including Massachusetts. And have you ever seen one of those “Choose Life” license plates? Some states, including Massachusetts, allocate funding for those to fake women’s health centers.
Every Member of Congress should research whether there are fake women’s health centers in their district and how they are funded. We must be united in our opposition to allowing federal funding to these fake centers. They are a danger to public health and contribute to the inequities that have long plagued our country – especially as long as Trump is willing to spend tax dollars on them.
With so much on the line when it comes to reproductive health – a recent Supreme Court decision gutting the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, Republican governors exploiting a pandemic to restrict abortion access, and the next attack on Roe v. Wade waiting in the wings – the responsibility falls to elected officials in deep Democratic districts to lead the charge.
It’s not enough for these seats to be held by someone who will simply vote the right way or say the right thing. We need champions who will be fearless and unyielding in their commitment to fight for reproductive justice for all. The future of health care for millions of people is at stake.
Jesse Mermell (@jessemermell) is a former leader at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and is a candidate for Congress in Massachusetts’ Fourth District.