October 3, 2025 • 30 mins
Since our previous episode on crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, their numbers in the US have only grown as the number of abortion clinics declines. We go over how these unregulated fake clinics collect data, get funding and prey on the marginalized.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuffan
Never Told You production of By Heart Radio, and welcome
to an episode that is very timely. So today the
date is October second, twenty twenty five. As we record this,
(00:29):
you can see our past episode that we did on
crisis pregnancy centers or CPCs about this and several episodes
we don't bridget about abortion and tech. But yeah, we
thought we would come back and do an update because
things have changed since we first did that episode. But
(00:52):
before we get into that, let's establish a definition of
what we're talking about. According to Planned Parenthood, Quote, pregnancy
centers also called CPCs, unregulated pregnancy centers or UPCs, or
fake clinics are clinics or mobile vans that look like
real health centers, but they're run by anti abortion activists
(01:14):
who have a shady, harmful agenda to scare, shame, or
pressure you out of getting an abortion, and to tell
lies about abortion, birth control, and sexual health. Most crisis
pregnancy centers aren't legitimate medical clinics, so they don't have
to abide by HIPPA and keep your information private like
most real healthcare providers do. These crisis pregnancy centers could
(01:36):
even give your information to other anti abortion organizations or
use it to harass you. This could be especially concerning
if you live in a state with anti abortion laws.
They're typically conservative and faith based. They look like real clinics,
and a lot of times are purposefully located next to
legitimate clinics or college campuses. Basically, they'll promise you all
(02:01):
kinds of support in return for watching their educational and
heavy quotes, movies, or lectures, and often it's all all
of it's a lie. Like the movies, the lectures, the
promise of supplies, none of it's true, and they will
not help you get an abortion or birth control. While
the staff present themselves as medical professionals, they dress like
(02:25):
medical professionals, many of them are anti abortionists with zero training.
They feed patients false information about how abortions lead to cancer,
They show them these scary videos, They give them incorrect
do dates because they want to stall those that come
in looking for reproductive care so that they fall outside
(02:48):
the legal abortion window or scare them out of pursuing
it at all. The longer someone waits to get an abortion,
the more risks there are of complications as well, health
complications as well as the goal comps. Recent reports indicate
that these centers outnumber abortion clinics three to one, and
those numbers probably need revising upwards, and they disproportionately impact
(03:13):
black women, low income women, and teens who lack access.
These groups are also the most likely to seek abortions,
in part because of lack of access and healthcare cost.
Lack of sex education is also a factor, in particular
when it comes to young folks. On top of outwardly
looking like an abortion clinic, they advertise low cost ultrasounds
(03:35):
and tests, which get a lot of people to come in.
They also offer a sort of baby books system where
you can earn points to buy things like diapers by
going to Bible school or attending their classes. The people
who run these clinics know that the US has a
deeply unequal healthcare system and they use that to their advantage.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Right and the numbers of these clinics only grew after
a ro Vie Wade was overturned, and this is according
to the Guardian. They're now quote at least twenty five
hundred CPCs as compared to just seven hundred and sixty
five abortion clinics in the US, and as more and
more stories were coming out about women being forced to
carry out fatal, doomed pregnancies. After Roe was overturned, Republicans
(04:19):
wanted to reframe the issue and show how much they
quote cared about women's health with CPCs. Again reminder, they
do not have to have any kind of medical professional
in there.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Not sure how that's going to help or show how
they care. So it's kind of odd, but you know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, well, and this got to the point that CPCs
are featured in a crossover episode between Station nineteen and
Grey's Anatomy.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oh yes, I've seen it on several different other ones too,
Like I feel like SVU may have featured it, or
maybe it was Criminal Minds. It was something interesting. They
do have a moment where they'd show where teenagers are
being forced to have children in people's tax dicks in
order to get them to force them to have babies.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Wow. Yeah, this was news to me. This was news
to me. Okay, So this brings us to the updates.
And I'm going to do this a bit differently than
how I normally structure outlines, because this was the one
that I started this outline. Normally I try to do
it chronologically, but because all of this is happening at once,
(05:27):
it wasn't gonna work that way.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So because the whole thing is chaotic and they do
this on purpose, they did this on purpose, and it
feels cyclical. Butt it out of ordered way. So that
feels right.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Annie, Yeah, it does feel right. So we're gonna go
by like bullet points of updates. Okay, So first bullet
point is that we the American people, are funding these
with our taxpayer dollars. While about eighty seven percent of
funding comes from private donations, a disturbing amount comes from
(06:01):
our government. Between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty three, CPCs
received federal funding upwards of four hundred million dollars, and
that's according to a twenty twenty four study. This money
comes with little to no official oversight. In our state
of Georgia alone, an annual two million dollars in government
funding goes to CPCs. This while pregnant people are dying
(06:25):
due to delays and care our refusal to provide it.
Between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty four, twenty one
states also provided funding. Texas and Florida provide the most
Texas by far the most. Like shockingly, it's huge the gap.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I don't feel like that's shocking. I guess I'm just
more shocked that the numbers for everybody else wasn't higher.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I guess I thought Florida would be closer to Texas, really,
but Texas far and away.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And it may have something to do with the fact
that Mexico. They're on the border with Mexico, which does
give a little more access to a few of people.
That could be a whole different conversation that we have,
because Florida has Georgia, which is outlawed abortions as well,
and you know, Southern area is not doing well well,
Southeast area is not doing well in general, I say,
(07:23):
crying in my own stuff, okay, yeah, And to be clear,
even without our tax dollars, this is a billion dollar industry.
But I do want to help point out one thing.
One of the reasons that we've brought this subject back
is because in Gwinnett County, which holds a chunk of
Lake refugees and immigrants, a large population of which one
(07:45):
of the Democratic leaders on their board actually voted to
put in I want to say around oh yeah, four
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for specifically this type of programs.
This is our democratic people, by the way, and they
did it very loudly and very proudly. So this is
where we were like, wait, wait, I thought we were
(08:06):
finally to a I say this with like Grandma's to
a point where we understood this was fake and if
people were understanding this was fake anyway back to so,
in twenty twenty two alone, they racked in about one
point seven billion dollars. However, they have not shown any
recent significant increase in customers, despite tax filing showing their
(08:27):
spending went up by forty five percent. Suspicials.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, pretty suspicious and yeah, if you're wondering, there have
been multiple instances of tax fraud, over billing, and other
criminal activities in CPCs. The government continues to block any
(08:56):
legislation regulating or overseeing these CPCs, including aimed at protecting
the privacy of adults and children, because it could have
led to the closure of thousands of CPCs. So basically,
people were trying to get this law passed that would
protect people's privacy, but in doing so, it would have
(09:18):
shut down these CPCs, and they didn't want the CPCs
to be shut down.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
All right, because they want that information to the continue
harassing women and those who can get pregnant. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yes, In fact, Project twenty twenty five, which if you
somehow blessedly don't know, was this whole thing that was
like a super long document that Trump's people put together
for when they were right when he got elected they
were going to start doing.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And by the way, Trump just acknowledged it efficiently and
bringing in the person who helped create it to start
doing things as the government is currently shut down.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, well, this document included a whole section on abortion
data and reporting. Multiple states have introduced and sometimes passed
legislations that would make abortion documents available to the public
because they aren't health records, because it's not an actual
medical facility, legalizing the collection and publishing abortion data, labeling
(10:24):
the abortion pill as a controlled substance and therefore trackable,
and collecting data on pregnant folks. And they frame all
these things through the lens of protecting women of course.
So there's that. Then, as recently mentioned, Google I made
(10:44):
about ten million dollars running ads for these fake clinics
from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three, CPCs ran
about ten point two million dollars of ads on Google.
Several people reported feeling tricks or miss led by these ads.
According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, these ads
(11:05):
were clicked on about thirteen million times. About forty percent
of them contained the phrase abortion pill reversal, which is
a completely fake thing that promises to reverse an abortion.
Google also accepted grants from the CPC organizations.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Just I know people don't research things, but in what
world do they think a reverse abortion? If they think
abortion is killing babies, how does the reverse work?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, you know, it's it's so depressing in a lot
of ways because it's like, we don't get the sex education,
we don't have the facial.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Psychicommon sense unless they're saying they're Jesus, as they believe,
who can bring back the dead, supposedly in which the rapture,
by the way, has been re redated to think October
fifth or was our sex Oh soon? Maybe I'm raw
I forgot, but now it's read in October anyway, going
back to I don't understand, I don't understand. Yeah, maybe
(12:12):
that's what it is. They're promising a miracles somehow of
things that's not in existence.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, no, exactly so.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
According to Jessica Valentia, the largest CPC network in the US,
Heartbeat International, suffered a massive data breach in twenty twenty four.
There are numerous reasons why this is incredibly dangerous right now,
I think that's self explanatory, but you know so from
Miss magazine, HBI staff conducting online trainings on the next
(12:42):
level client management software exposed UPC client's personal information including
marital status, living situation, and a map showing where they live.
And private health information including date of last menstrual period,
do date, privacy tests, and ultrasound results. There's so many
(13:05):
bad things.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, no, I mean, and that's like again, if you
if you go in, they are trying to trick you.
They're trying to make look like they're a real clinic.
And if you go in and you assume that like
a real clinic, there are these rules they're supposed to
abide by regarding your privacy and your data, and they
(13:29):
don't have to invite by them, right and the fact
that like a map showing where they live.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Because there's something were to go wrong, and this includes
people who have health complications and many of the people
who can get pregnant, they have a miscarriage or some
type of uh you know, for many some type of
something go wrong doing their pregnancy. They can be immediately
(13:56):
targeted as someone who may woo, may be accused of
of abortion and without being illegal and as in fact,
we've seen many of phrases being turned recently where they
talk about baby found in closets or baby found in
trash cans and it turned out to be fetus that
have been a miscarriage, and then people being charged. That's
(14:18):
really terrifying.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm I know singing to the choir here,
but just again, as someone who recently went to the hospital,
they ask you, like when was your last menstruation? That
means so many different That could mean a million things.
(14:41):
That's not really an indicator. I feel like even friends
I have who are pretty regular still have irregularity. Sometimes
I was.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Never normal, Like if there is such a thing, I've
never had this calendar thing everybody talked about like, oh
they kept calendars, was like for what? Like it didn't
make sense because I I would be all over the
board like it. Sometimes I felt like I was having
it every other week, and of course that's a bigger
conversation about bigger problems that they don't talk about enough
and they don't tell you as a problem, yes, staring
(15:13):
out into the world.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Well, yeah, exactly. I mean that's I've said before on
here that of the first time I went to the
guy to college is he told me you're pregnant. I
was like no, And I took another test and told me, oh,
you're pregnant. He's gonna call my dad is crying. And
I just now had a friend be like, no, that's
(15:35):
actually a thing, and he should have told you it
can mean all these other health issues.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
But he told you. He probably didn't know because he's
not educated enough, because he doesn't that women's health is
not exactly enough exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And that's kind of the thing is like, clearly, I
mean clearly this is both done to control people's bodies,
but it's also done it like it's coming from people
who know nothing.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
About it, right, like nothing and don't care enough.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
No, no, not at all. Okay, moving on to a
different point than data collection, stricter abortion laws and reduced
access to the anti abortion pill and health this is
a big thing there is and has been a concerted
push to eliminate abortion altogether, and a lot of it
does rely on the same misinformation and disinformation these CPCs use,
(16:27):
and as more and more abortion clinics shutter their doors,
people especially those who can't afford to travel elsewhere to
where it might be legal, can grow more and more desperate.
In Texas, for example, there are zero abortion clinics and
almost two hundred CPCs on top of that. Pretty immediately
after the twenty twenty five US presidential election, anti abortionist
(16:49):
work calling for the federal government to defund Planned Parenthood,
which they recently pretty much did, encouraging states to defund
any organization they didn't agree with, and allowing them to
strip Planned Parenthood of the ability to accept Medicaid, which
a lot of people use. Well, we'll see, but at
this point and they said, use that money instead for CPCs,
(17:12):
And this could essentially force people with no other options
into the CPCs. And we already know that we have
one of the highest maternal death rates for a developed
nation in the world, and that disproportionately impacts black women,
and this exacerbates all of that. Between twenty nineteen and
(17:33):
twenty twenty two, the maternal mortality rate in Texas went
up by fifty six percent, and as we know, some
states are making it harder to collect that data at all,
so I can't even get to that. And this has
also led to a care crisis, a situation in which
newly graduated medical students do not want to work in
(17:55):
states with abortion bands because they could get in trouble.
This is completely understandable, and it makes the healthcare gap worse.
So yep, but you know, this has been a lot
of doom and gloom. And I want to say, like
(18:16):
I did read from a lot of people who went
into a CPC, and it was usually they said it
was the you know, free ultrasound or something like that,
and they went in and felt so pressured and so
angry when they learned what it was. But I'm very
(18:40):
sad for the people who it took too long for
them to realize this was a fake. But I am
glad there were a lot of cases of people being like, no,
that I knew it was not like it's just something
felt wrong about it. They weren't listening to.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Me, they were just arguing with me the entire time.
Or I know, if I haven't seen several like where's
your husband, where's your boyfriend? Have talked to your boyfriend?
We need we need to I think if we add
some ones that I had required that either the boyfriend
or a guardian have to be present with them.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah yeah, but and they rightfully were again furious and upset.
And it just feels like it just feels like it
should be illegal. If I'm going into a place it's
purposely trying to trick me that it is a legit
(19:34):
medical place that doesn't feel like it should be legal
at all.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right, Well, we know seeing like pharmacists who have refused
to give Plan b H, which is by the way,
a whole different conversation because it's not even as effective
as this she could be as it should be anyway.
But all that, and then like other actual health care
providers providing to start us. And then we know that
(20:01):
small areas and hospitals. I believe there was a rule.
I know there was a rural one hospital women's center
that left their town the only one accessible for like
fifty miles round and they could not do their job,
so they left. And of course the government Georgia government
is blaming medicaid medicare oddly, which once again Kemp has
(20:26):
been very proudly talking about how he denied access or
denied more funds from the Biden administration and now they're
cut completely because of the big beautiful bill. So it's interesting.
We knew that we know how this works, but because
of things like that. But what is opening up are
things like CPCs instead.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yes, and again like even before this, uh, not everyone
could afford, not everyone could travel, and there was there's
a rural healthcare crisis. This has been for a long time.
So this is only making things worse. There are attempts
(21:17):
to push back. There's been a lot of them. I
only have a few in here, but there are a lot,
and that's from organizations and reporters, people doing this work
and making sure we know about it, and some government officials.
In May of twenty twenty four, New York Attorney General
Letitia James suit twelve CPCs for deceptive marketing practices. In
(21:41):
March of twenty twenty five, Hawaii's House of Representatives introduced
a resolution to investigate whether or not CPCs were violating
patients rights to privacy, particularly by implying that they are
covered by HIPPA because some of them do imply it
when they're not, and also by retaining and collecting patient data.
(22:01):
And recent surveys indicate that seventy five percent of those
asks to want CPCs to be regulated. This is one
of the like beautiful, frustrating things I find a lot
with so many of these issues where like most people
don't agree with.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Them rights like this is this is what I feel
like we are in the state of politics. Like every
time I see international level of like social media posts
and they're like, what is wrong with y'all talking to
the US in general? And we get that from states
that are blue to Georgia, like why would you let
this happened? You voted for this and are like, no,
we didn't, we didn't. The amount of jayman ring, the
(22:38):
amount of like unofficial routes of how things have happened
in our elections, and how like do processes completely out
the window now, Like there's so many things that I'm like,
why are y'all not understanding the bigger picture in this
conversation about who is controlling what and that the majority
(22:58):
of people are really unhappy unhappy. There is a chunk
of people who are blindly saying yay, we're getting all
these things done, and I'm like, yeah, nothing is showing
that our economy is awful. Everything is increasing, the job
market has gotten worse. All these numbers are showing we
are not doing good. We are not doing well in general.
And yet they want to again blame the whole, when
(23:21):
it's the whole that are like, no, but we didn't
want this, We tried to fight this. I don't understand
what is happening. And this is that same conversation with
abortion too. For the last few years, probably the last
ten years, people started to understand choice. Oh, that's what
you're talking about. Choice to have a family, choice to
(23:42):
try to do these things through surrogacy or through IVF,
or choosing not to have children from jump, by having
better access to birth control, or actually having health care
at the beginning, to make sure everybody is safe so
those who choose to can live a healthy life. This
is the main Like it started going that way for
about split second and then all of a sudden, it
(24:06):
just imploded. And I say all of a sudden, It's
not all of a sudden, It's been planned. It's been
a planned attack that happened in a way that they
had to first rig the system within. Like I know,
I'm talking to our own people, but just just just
in case the international people who are like, what is
wrong with y'all? Do tune in because we have discovered
we are internationally syndicated. Is that the word internationally release
(24:32):
published release syndicated broadcasts. Hey, Argentina sometimes listened to us.
We found Brazil listen to us. Hey South Korea listens
tore us. Because we've got a few people anyway back
to so all of these things are not something that
we had any control of. What has happened is people
have gotten money, and the rich keep getting richer and
(24:52):
using that rich funds in order to get things that
they want done and what they want done. And who
is getting rich are white men in general, like who
give NOx about anybody else? And the people who are
sucking up to them think that they're going to be
pulled up with them. And I say that for the
people who are pocs as well as the marginalized. They
(25:16):
don't understand, you're they're not gonna pick us, No, they're
going to use us and then dismiss us whatever that
looks like, how harsh that might look, and the first
to go are those that are the most marginalized because
it's easy. It's easy to do that. That has been
in the playbook from jump. So when we say this
(25:39):
was not our choice, a chunk of people, a chunk
of the population, even in the state of Georgia. This
is why we turned purple for us, like deep deep purple,
because we understood that. But once they realized that it's
giving too many to the people, too much power, they
gerrymandered the hell out of it. And then they went
back to the court, which has been handed to a
(26:02):
very conservative, right winged group of people, to undo all
of those things that have brought a little bit of
equity for us, including protecting our own health and body.
That's just the bigger part. And we would love for
people to understand the CPCs are not something that people
(26:23):
would actually choose. I don't even think people who are conservative, pregnant,
conservative people would not go to them by choice. That's
not a thing. People who are desperate as who are
being sent there and then held much captive.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, you're completely right, nobody's going there by choice.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
No, this is a desperation like because they're trying to
find assistance. And I've seen many of people actually talk
about how they were promised car seats, how they were
promised formula, how they were promised diapers that afterwards that
they could come back to them, but that turns out
not to be true manya cases. And of course that's
(27:02):
in general, like any system is really gross, like WICK,
which is for women and children and given to any
and every person who has children that can only lasts
for what four years? Yeah, it's not it's very short.
It's very short, and all you can get is milk
and diapers. Like it's so such a small amount of
(27:24):
things that you can get, and it has to be approved,
it has to say, Wick approved. Like the amount of
like desperation that we as a society have been in
even before this has been appalling, and so that they're
trying to rip away even more from the most destitute
of people is what's most horrifying. And the CPCs have
(27:46):
popped up and have been giving hundreds of thousands of
dollars per county when that's not what people.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Need or what they want exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
This is an act of hostage. We are like we
the people who are able to be pregnant and aren't
marginalized are being held hostage within our government. Like, I
don't know how it is but that, but you're right,
there's still good things happening. Again, the majority of us
do not believe in this, but we've seen protests happen,
(28:18):
and I hope and that's always been kind of like.
Of course, the bigger protests are the anti abortion people, antichoys,
people who come in front of abortion clinics which actually
have to be so heavily regulated and they get no funding. Yeah,
that is unreal. But the CPCs, there are those who
(28:38):
are out there trying to talk about the truth about
what is happening and who they are. Like the amount
of pushback that that counselor got un least she's a
city councilor for allowing that, going against the people who
voted for her, and they were very loud about that.
That's what brought attention to some of this conversation is
people were very loud about what are you doing? So
(29:01):
the very least at least we can hold our own accountable,
which we will, which is part of the problems to
the other side. Don't care. But anyway, there are some
things I think trying to find the brighter side in
a very ekey yucky moment, there is still people who
(29:21):
are loud about the fact that they do see so
much wrong with the system.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yes, yes, and we would love if you listeners have
any people we should shout out or organizations we should
shout out when it comes to this, Please let us know.
You can email us at Hello at stuffwenevertold you dot com.
You can find us a blue sky at mom Stuff
(29:46):
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book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
Society's too, our super producer Christeen or sective produce Maya,
and our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you
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heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
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(30:08):
if you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuffan
Never Told You production of By Heart Radio, and welcome
to an episode that is very timely. So today the
date is October second, twenty twenty five. As we record this,
(00:29):
you can see our past episode that we did on
crisis pregnancy centers or CPCs about this and several episodes
we don't bridget about abortion and tech. But yeah, we
thought we would come back and do an update because
things have changed since we first did that episode. But
(00:52):
before we get into that, let's establish a definition of
what we're talking about. According to Planned Parenthood, Quote, pregnancy
centers also called CPCs, unregulated pregnancy centers or UPCs, or
fake clinics are clinics or mobile vans that look like
real health centers, but they're run by anti abortion activists
(01:14):
who have a shady, harmful agenda to scare, shame, or
pressure you out of getting an abortion, and to tell
lies about abortion, birth control, and sexual health. Most crisis
pregnancy centers aren't legitimate medical clinics, so they don't have
to abide by HIPPA and keep your information private like
most real healthcare providers do. These crisis pregnancy centers could
(01:36):
even give your information to other anti abortion organizations or
use it to harass you. This could be especially concerning
if you live in a state with anti abortion laws.
They're typically conservative and faith based. They look like real clinics,
and a lot of times are purposefully located next to
legitimate clinics or college campuses. Basically, they'll promise you all
(02:01):
kinds of support in return for watching their educational and
heavy quotes, movies, or lectures, and often it's all all
of it's a lie. Like the movies, the lectures, the
promise of supplies, none of it's true, and they will
not help you get an abortion or birth control. While
the staff present themselves as medical professionals, they dress like
(02:25):
medical professionals, many of them are anti abortionists with zero training.
They feed patients false information about how abortions lead to cancer,
They show them these scary videos, They give them incorrect
do dates because they want to stall those that come
in looking for reproductive care so that they fall outside
(02:48):
the legal abortion window or scare them out of pursuing
it at all. The longer someone waits to get an abortion,
the more risks there are of complications as well, health
complications as well as the goal comps. Recent reports indicate
that these centers outnumber abortion clinics three to one, and
those numbers probably need revising upwards, and they disproportionately impact
(03:13):
black women, low income women, and teens who lack access.
These groups are also the most likely to seek abortions,
in part because of lack of access and healthcare cost.
Lack of sex education is also a factor, in particular
when it comes to young folks. On top of outwardly
looking like an abortion clinic, they advertise low cost ultrasounds
(03:35):
and tests, which get a lot of people to come in.
They also offer a sort of baby books system where
you can earn points to buy things like diapers by
going to Bible school or attending their classes. The people
who run these clinics know that the US has a
deeply unequal healthcare system and they use that to their advantage.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Right and the numbers of these clinics only grew after
a ro Vie Wade was overturned, and this is according
to the Guardian. They're now quote at least twenty five
hundred CPCs as compared to just seven hundred and sixty
five abortion clinics in the US, and as more and
more stories were coming out about women being forced to
carry out fatal, doomed pregnancies. After Roe was overturned, Republicans
(04:19):
wanted to reframe the issue and show how much they
quote cared about women's health with CPCs. Again reminder, they
do not have to have any kind of medical professional
in there.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Not sure how that's going to help or show how
they care. So it's kind of odd, but you know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, well, and this got to the point that CPCs
are featured in a crossover episode between Station nineteen and
Grey's Anatomy.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oh yes, I've seen it on several different other ones too,
Like I feel like SVU may have featured it, or
maybe it was Criminal Minds. It was something interesting. They
do have a moment where they'd show where teenagers are
being forced to have children in people's tax dicks in
order to get them to force them to have babies.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Wow. Yeah, this was news to me. This was news
to me. Okay, So this brings us to the updates.
And I'm going to do this a bit differently than
how I normally structure outlines, because this was the one
that I started this outline. Normally I try to do
it chronologically, but because all of this is happening at once,
(05:27):
it wasn't gonna work that way.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
So because the whole thing is chaotic and they do
this on purpose, they did this on purpose, and it
feels cyclical. Butt it out of ordered way. So that
feels right.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Annie, Yeah, it does feel right. So we're gonna go
by like bullet points of updates. Okay, So first bullet
point is that we the American people, are funding these
with our taxpayer dollars. While about eighty seven percent of
funding comes from private donations, a disturbing amount comes from
(06:01):
our government. Between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty three, CPCs
received federal funding upwards of four hundred million dollars, and
that's according to a twenty twenty four study. This money
comes with little to no official oversight. In our state
of Georgia alone, an annual two million dollars in government
funding goes to CPCs. This while pregnant people are dying
(06:25):
due to delays and care our refusal to provide it.
Between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty four, twenty one
states also provided funding. Texas and Florida provide the most
Texas by far the most. Like shockingly, it's huge the gap.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I don't feel like that's shocking. I guess I'm just
more shocked that the numbers for everybody else wasn't higher.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I guess I thought Florida would be closer to Texas, really,
but Texas far and away.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And it may have something to do with the fact
that Mexico. They're on the border with Mexico, which does
give a little more access to a few of people.
That could be a whole different conversation that we have,
because Florida has Georgia, which is outlawed abortions as well,
and you know, Southern area is not doing well well,
Southeast area is not doing well in general, I say,
(07:23):
crying in my own stuff, okay, yeah, And to be clear,
even without our tax dollars, this is a billion dollar industry.
But I do want to help point out one thing.
One of the reasons that we've brought this subject back
is because in Gwinnett County, which holds a chunk of
Lake refugees and immigrants, a large population of which one
(07:45):
of the Democratic leaders on their board actually voted to
put in I want to say around oh yeah, four
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for specifically this type of programs.
This is our democratic people, by the way, and they
did it very loudly and very proudly. So this is
where we were like, wait, wait, I thought we were
(08:06):
finally to a I say this with like Grandma's to
a point where we understood this was fake and if
people were understanding this was fake anyway back to so,
in twenty twenty two alone, they racked in about one
point seven billion dollars. However, they have not shown any
recent significant increase in customers, despite tax filing showing their
(08:27):
spending went up by forty five percent. Suspicials.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, pretty suspicious and yeah, if you're wondering, there have
been multiple instances of tax fraud, over billing, and other
criminal activities in CPCs. The government continues to block any
(08:56):
legislation regulating or overseeing these CPCs, including aimed at protecting
the privacy of adults and children, because it could have
led to the closure of thousands of CPCs. So basically,
people were trying to get this law passed that would
protect people's privacy, but in doing so, it would have
(09:18):
shut down these CPCs, and they didn't want the CPCs
to be shut down.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
All right, because they want that information to the continue
harassing women and those who can get pregnant. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yes, In fact, Project twenty twenty five, which if you
somehow blessedly don't know, was this whole thing that was
like a super long document that Trump's people put together
for when they were right when he got elected they
were going to start doing.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And by the way, Trump just acknowledged it efficiently and
bringing in the person who helped create it to start
doing things as the government is currently shut down.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, well, this document included a whole section on abortion
data and reporting. Multiple states have introduced and sometimes passed
legislations that would make abortion documents available to the public
because they aren't health records, because it's not an actual
medical facility, legalizing the collection and publishing abortion data, labeling
(10:24):
the abortion pill as a controlled substance and therefore trackable,
and collecting data on pregnant folks. And they frame all
these things through the lens of protecting women of course.
So there's that. Then, as recently mentioned, Google I made
(10:44):
about ten million dollars running ads for these fake clinics
from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three, CPCs ran
about ten point two million dollars of ads on Google.
Several people reported feeling tricks or miss led by these ads.
According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, these ads
(11:05):
were clicked on about thirteen million times. About forty percent
of them contained the phrase abortion pill reversal, which is
a completely fake thing that promises to reverse an abortion.
Google also accepted grants from the CPC organizations.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Just I know people don't research things, but in what
world do they think a reverse abortion? If they think
abortion is killing babies, how does the reverse work?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, you know, it's it's so depressing in a lot
of ways because it's like, we don't get the sex education,
we don't have the facial.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Psychicommon sense unless they're saying they're Jesus, as they believe,
who can bring back the dead, supposedly in which the rapture,
by the way, has been re redated to think October
fifth or was our sex Oh soon? Maybe I'm raw
I forgot, but now it's read in October anyway, going
back to I don't understand, I don't understand. Yeah, maybe
(12:12):
that's what it is. They're promising a miracles somehow of
things that's not in existence.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, no, exactly so.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
According to Jessica Valentia, the largest CPC network in the US,
Heartbeat International, suffered a massive data breach in twenty twenty four.
There are numerous reasons why this is incredibly dangerous right now,
I think that's self explanatory, but you know so from
Miss magazine, HBI staff conducting online trainings on the next
(12:42):
level client management software exposed UPC client's personal information including
marital status, living situation, and a map showing where they live.
And private health information including date of last menstrual period,
do date, privacy tests, and ultrasound results. There's so many
(13:05):
bad things.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, no, I mean, and that's like again, if you
if you go in, they are trying to trick you.
They're trying to make look like they're a real clinic.
And if you go in and you assume that like
a real clinic, there are these rules they're supposed to
abide by regarding your privacy and your data, and they
(13:29):
don't have to invite by them, right and the fact
that like a map showing where they live.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Because there's something were to go wrong, and this includes
people who have health complications and many of the people
who can get pregnant, they have a miscarriage or some
type of uh you know, for many some type of
something go wrong doing their pregnancy. They can be immediately
(13:56):
targeted as someone who may woo, may be accused of
of abortion and without being illegal and as in fact,
we've seen many of phrases being turned recently where they
talk about baby found in closets or baby found in
trash cans and it turned out to be fetus that
have been a miscarriage, and then people being charged. That's
(14:18):
really terrifying.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm I know singing to the choir here,
but just again, as someone who recently went to the hospital,
they ask you, like when was your last menstruation? That
means so many different That could mean a million things.
(14:41):
That's not really an indicator. I feel like even friends
I have who are pretty regular still have irregularity. Sometimes
I was.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Never normal, Like if there is such a thing, I've
never had this calendar thing everybody talked about like, oh
they kept calendars, was like for what? Like it didn't
make sense because I I would be all over the
board like it. Sometimes I felt like I was having
it every other week, and of course that's a bigger
conversation about bigger problems that they don't talk about enough
and they don't tell you as a problem, yes, staring
(15:13):
out into the world.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Well, yeah, exactly. I mean that's I've said before on
here that of the first time I went to the
guy to college is he told me you're pregnant. I
was like no, And I took another test and told me, oh,
you're pregnant. He's gonna call my dad is crying. And
I just now had a friend be like, no, that's
(15:35):
actually a thing, and he should have told you it
can mean all these other health issues.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
But he told you. He probably didn't know because he's
not educated enough, because he doesn't that women's health is
not exactly enough exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And that's kind of the thing is like, clearly, I
mean clearly this is both done to control people's bodies,
but it's also done it like it's coming from people
who know nothing.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
About it, right, like nothing and don't care enough.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
No, no, not at all. Okay, moving on to a
different point than data collection, stricter abortion laws and reduced
access to the anti abortion pill and health this is
a big thing there is and has been a concerted
push to eliminate abortion altogether, and a lot of it
does rely on the same misinformation and disinformation these CPCs use,
(16:27):
and as more and more abortion clinics shutter their doors,
people especially those who can't afford to travel elsewhere to
where it might be legal, can grow more and more desperate.
In Texas, for example, there are zero abortion clinics and
almost two hundred CPCs on top of that. Pretty immediately
after the twenty twenty five US presidential election, anti abortionist
(16:49):
work calling for the federal government to defund Planned Parenthood,
which they recently pretty much did, encouraging states to defund
any organization they didn't agree with, and allowing them to
strip Planned Parenthood of the ability to accept Medicaid, which
a lot of people use. Well, we'll see, but at
this point and they said, use that money instead for CPCs,
(17:12):
And this could essentially force people with no other options
into the CPCs. And we already know that we have
one of the highest maternal death rates for a developed
nation in the world, and that disproportionately impacts black women,
and this exacerbates all of that. Between twenty nineteen and
(17:33):
twenty twenty two, the maternal mortality rate in Texas went
up by fifty six percent, and as we know, some
states are making it harder to collect that data at all,
so I can't even get to that. And this has
also led to a care crisis, a situation in which
newly graduated medical students do not want to work in
(17:55):
states with abortion bands because they could get in trouble.
This is completely understandable, and it makes the healthcare gap worse.
So yep, but you know, this has been a lot
of doom and gloom. And I want to say, like
(18:16):
I did read from a lot of people who went
into a CPC, and it was usually they said it
was the you know, free ultrasound or something like that,
and they went in and felt so pressured and so
angry when they learned what it was. But I'm very
(18:40):
sad for the people who it took too long for
them to realize this was a fake. But I am
glad there were a lot of cases of people being like, no,
that I knew it was not like it's just something
felt wrong about it. They weren't listening to.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Me, they were just arguing with me the entire time.
Or I know, if I haven't seen several like where's
your husband, where's your boyfriend? Have talked to your boyfriend?
We need we need to I think if we add
some ones that I had required that either the boyfriend
or a guardian have to be present with them.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah yeah, but and they rightfully were again furious and upset.
And it just feels like it just feels like it
should be illegal. If I'm going into a place it's
purposely trying to trick me that it is a legit
(19:34):
medical place that doesn't feel like it should be legal
at all.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right, Well, we know seeing like pharmacists who have refused
to give Plan b H, which is by the way,
a whole different conversation because it's not even as effective
as this she could be as it should be anyway.
But all that, and then like other actual health care
providers providing to start us. And then we know that
(20:01):
small areas and hospitals. I believe there was a rule.
I know there was a rural one hospital women's center
that left their town the only one accessible for like
fifty miles round and they could not do their job,
so they left. And of course the government Georgia government
is blaming medicaid medicare oddly, which once again Kemp has
(20:26):
been very proudly talking about how he denied access or
denied more funds from the Biden administration and now they're
cut completely because of the big beautiful bill. So it's interesting.
We knew that we know how this works, but because
of things like that. But what is opening up are
things like CPCs instead.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yes, and again like even before this, uh, not everyone
could afford, not everyone could travel, and there was there's
a rural healthcare crisis. This has been for a long time.
So this is only making things worse. There are attempts
(21:17):
to push back. There's been a lot of them. I
only have a few in here, but there are a lot,
and that's from organizations and reporters, people doing this work
and making sure we know about it, and some government officials.
In May of twenty twenty four, New York Attorney General
Letitia James suit twelve CPCs for deceptive marketing practices. In
(21:41):
March of twenty twenty five, Hawaii's House of Representatives introduced
a resolution to investigate whether or not CPCs were violating
patients rights to privacy, particularly by implying that they are
covered by HIPPA because some of them do imply it
when they're not, and also by retaining and collecting patient data.
(22:01):
And recent surveys indicate that seventy five percent of those
asks to want CPCs to be regulated. This is one
of the like beautiful, frustrating things I find a lot
with so many of these issues where like most people
don't agree with.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Them rights like this is this is what I feel
like we are in the state of politics. Like every
time I see international level of like social media posts
and they're like, what is wrong with y'all talking to
the US in general? And we get that from states
that are blue to Georgia, like why would you let
this happened? You voted for this and are like, no,
we didn't, we didn't. The amount of jayman ring, the
(22:38):
amount of like unofficial routes of how things have happened
in our elections, and how like do processes completely out
the window now, Like there's so many things that I'm like,
why are y'all not understanding the bigger picture in this
conversation about who is controlling what and that the majority
(22:58):
of people are really unhappy unhappy. There is a chunk
of people who are blindly saying yay, we're getting all
these things done, and I'm like, yeah, nothing is showing
that our economy is awful. Everything is increasing, the job
market has gotten worse. All these numbers are showing we
are not doing good. We are not doing well in general.
And yet they want to again blame the whole, when
(23:21):
it's the whole that are like, no, but we didn't
want this, We tried to fight this. I don't understand
what is happening. And this is that same conversation with
abortion too. For the last few years, probably the last
ten years, people started to understand choice. Oh, that's what
you're talking about. Choice to have a family, choice to
(23:42):
try to do these things through surrogacy or through IVF,
or choosing not to have children from jump, by having
better access to birth control, or actually having health care
at the beginning, to make sure everybody is safe so
those who choose to can live a healthy life. This
is the main Like it started going that way for
about split second and then all of a sudden, it
(24:06):
just imploded. And I say all of a sudden, It's
not all of a sudden, It's been planned. It's been
a planned attack that happened in a way that they
had to first rig the system within. Like I know,
I'm talking to our own people, but just just just
in case the international people who are like, what is
wrong with y'all? Do tune in because we have discovered
we are internationally syndicated. Is that the word internationally release
(24:32):
published release syndicated broadcasts. Hey, Argentina sometimes listened to us.
We found Brazil listen to us. Hey South Korea listens
tore us. Because we've got a few people anyway back
to so all of these things are not something that
we had any control of. What has happened is people
have gotten money, and the rich keep getting richer and
(24:52):
using that rich funds in order to get things that
they want done and what they want done. And who
is getting rich are white men in general, like who
give NOx about anybody else? And the people who are
sucking up to them think that they're going to be
pulled up with them. And I say that for the
people who are pocs as well as the marginalized. They
(25:16):
don't understand, you're they're not gonna pick us, No, they're
going to use us and then dismiss us whatever that
looks like, how harsh that might look, and the first
to go are those that are the most marginalized because
it's easy. It's easy to do that. That has been
in the playbook from jump. So when we say this
(25:39):
was not our choice, a chunk of people, a chunk
of the population, even in the state of Georgia. This
is why we turned purple for us, like deep deep purple,
because we understood that. But once they realized that it's
giving too many to the people, too much power, they
gerrymandered the hell out of it. And then they went
back to the court, which has been handed to a
(26:02):
very conservative, right winged group of people, to undo all
of those things that have brought a little bit of
equity for us, including protecting our own health and body.
That's just the bigger part. And we would love for
people to understand the CPCs are not something that people
(26:23):
would actually choose. I don't even think people who are conservative, pregnant,
conservative people would not go to them by choice. That's
not a thing. People who are desperate as who are
being sent there and then held much captive.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, you're completely right, nobody's going there by choice.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
No, this is a desperation like because they're trying to
find assistance. And I've seen many of people actually talk
about how they were promised car seats, how they were
promised formula, how they were promised diapers that afterwards that
they could come back to them, but that turns out
not to be true manya cases. And of course that's
(27:02):
in general, like any system is really gross, like WICK,
which is for women and children and given to any
and every person who has children that can only lasts
for what four years? Yeah, it's not it's very short.
It's very short, and all you can get is milk
and diapers. Like it's so such a small amount of
(27:24):
things that you can get, and it has to be approved,
it has to say, Wick approved. Like the amount of
like desperation that we as a society have been in
even before this has been appalling, and so that they're
trying to rip away even more from the most destitute
of people is what's most horrifying. And the CPCs have
(27:46):
popped up and have been giving hundreds of thousands of
dollars per county when that's not what people.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Need or what they want exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
This is an act of hostage. We are like we
the people who are able to be pregnant and aren't
marginalized are being held hostage within our government. Like, I
don't know how it is but that, but you're right,
there's still good things happening. Again, the majority of us
do not believe in this, but we've seen protests happen,
(28:18):
and I hope and that's always been kind of like.
Of course, the bigger protests are the anti abortion people, antichoys,
people who come in front of abortion clinics which actually
have to be so heavily regulated and they get no funding. Yeah,
that is unreal. But the CPCs, there are those who
(28:38):
are out there trying to talk about the truth about
what is happening and who they are. Like the amount
of pushback that that counselor got un least she's a
city councilor for allowing that, going against the people who
voted for her, and they were very loud about that.
That's what brought attention to some of this conversation is
people were very loud about what are you doing? So
(29:01):
the very least at least we can hold our own accountable,
which we will, which is part of the problems to
the other side. Don't care. But anyway, there are some
things I think trying to find the brighter side in
a very ekey yucky moment, there is still people who
(29:21):
are loud about the fact that they do see so
much wrong with the system.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yes, yes, and we would love if you listeners have
any people we should shout out or organizations we should
shout out when it comes to this, Please let us know.
You can email us at Hello at stuffwenevertold you dot com.
You can find us a blue sky at mom Stuff
(29:46):
podcast or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff when they
ever told you? We're us on YouTube and we have
a new merchandise at Cotton Bureau, and we have a
book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
Society's too, our super producer Christeen or sective produce Maya,
and our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you
for listening. Steff I never told you a question about
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
(30:08):
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