Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Faith Centers Operating in Bad Faith

Pregnant Women's Reasons for and Experiences of Visiting Antiabortion Pregnancy Resource Centers

“…These findings represent an important addition to the literature on pregnancy resource centers. Scholars have documented that these centers disseminate scientifically inaccurate information about abortion and contraception, and have argued that they play an inappropriate role in women's abortion decision making . This study extends this knowledge by including accounts of visits from pregnant women themselves, revealing the valued role these centers play in some women's lives.…”

“…It is important to recognize the role pregnancy resource centers play in meeting the needs of some pregnant women. Although these centers have been rightly criticized for disseminating scientifically inaccurate materials and employing potentially deceptive practices, the policy debate about their legitimacy needs to be more nuanced. Advocates and policymakers seeking to protect reproductive choice through regulation of these centers should bear in mind the reasons some pregnant women visit them, especially financially struggling women who worry about their ability to meet the needs of a pregnancy they wish to continue.…”

“…Research has documented that pregnancy resource centers disseminate scientifically inaccurate information about abortion and contraception . Largely in response to these findings, reproductive health and rights advocates and researchers have characterized these centers as problematic for their potential to deceive pregnant women about the safety of abortion and to inappropriately influence pregnancy decision making . Policymakers and advocates have called for regulation of these centers’ activities to protect women's right to choose, and scholars have more recently raised issues of transparency and the need to ensure that women provide informed consent .…”

Pregnant Women's Experiences of Crisis Pregnancy Centers: When Abortion Stigmatization Succeeds and Fails

“…You know, stuff like that. It was actually like a really nice place and the staff were super nice and it was all around like a super, super nice thing.While misunderstandings like this of a CPC's purpose are central to women's health advocates' concerns about CPCs unethically interfering in women's pregnancy decision‐making (Borrero, Frietsche, and Dehlendorf ; Bryant and Swartz ; NARAL Pro‐Choice America ; Rosen ), Samantha's experience is also an example of a pregnant woman feeling validated and supported at a CPC, perhaps because she was not considering abortion at the time. The seeming obfuscation of the CPC's antiabortion mission through non‐judgmental behavior meant that Samantha did not register the CPC counseling as stigmatizing abortion—and she left her appointment with her personal beliefs about abortion unaffected.…”

“…In this way, I posit that the process of stigmatizing abortion is similar to Butler's () argument about citation and the repetition of meaning established through usage as the source of power in hate speech: when respondents were considering abortion and CPC practices rhetorically cited respondents' preexisting negative beliefs about abortion, they were effective at stigmatizing abortion; when they did not tap into existing abortion stigma, they were not effective. Given that exposure to stigmatization efforts matters for the perpetuation of abortion stigma, advocates are right to be concerned that CPCs use deceptive tactics to bring pregnant women in the door (Borrero, Frietsche, and Dehlendorf ; Bryant and Swartz ; NARAL Pro‐Choice America ; Rosen ). But my findings further explicate that exposure alone is not sufficient to produce internalized abortion stigma.…”