Part 2: How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Use Clients' Private Data Against Them

In Part 2 of our 2-part series on the misleading practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, we delve into another misleading, yet surprisingly underreported, aspect of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (aka CPCs aka "fake clinics).

As we covered in Part 1, CPCs masquerade as if they are real health clinics - but because they are not, they're not subject to privacy laws like HIPPA that protect your personal health information. Of course, by design, their clients do not know this. CPCs then use information given to them by clients seeking their services to violate privacy and confidentiality for many reasons, including to use that info to harrass and surveil the client or abortion providers, to create "profiles" of those most likely to see their services in order to fuel their anti-abortion movement efforts, and - most terrifyingly - to potentially use private information clients have given them against them in lawsuits. This latter scenario is something that's becoming more and more possible as states pass super-restrictive and criminalizing abortion laws. 

Here to discuss this on the podcast is Kim Clark, senior attorney at Legal Voice and seasoned legal advocate for reproductive rights, health, and justice.

No time to listen? Check out Katie's op-ed on this topic or read the transcript of this episode.

LINKS:

- Transcript (AI-generated!)

- Op-ed written by Katie about Crisis Pregnancy Centers (includes more on how the Trump admin and its Supreme Court propped up CPCs): How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers

- Must-watch video: Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

- Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in 9 states

- In February 2022, Gender Justice along with their The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality partners released an urgent warning about the role the crisis pregnancy center (CPC) industry is poised to play in a post-Roe United States – as a surveillance tool for the anti-abortion movement: The CPC Industry as a Surveillance Tool of the Post-Roe State

- Experts Say Crisis Pregnancy Centers Could Spy On And Report Women Seeking An Abortion (Buzzfeed News, January 2022)

- More on NIFLA v. Becerra: Supreme Court Sides With California Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers (NPR, June 2018)

- Supreme Court Backs Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers in Free Speech Case (New York Times, June 2018)

- Thirty-One Attorneys General Challenge New Title X Restrictions on Women’s Reproductive Health Care (Press Release from office of Maryland's Attorney General Brian Frosh, 2019)

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