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URGENT: CPC Report Re-release

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BREAKING NEWS:

Groundbreaking Report Highlights How CPCs Are Breaching Data Privacy of Pregnant People for the Anti-Abortion Movement   

The Alliance is re-issuing our groundbreaking 2021 report, Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center Industry in Nine States, with an urgent warning about the role of the newly expanded crisis pregnancy center (CPC) industry, is poised to play in the post-Roe United States.

Learn More about what our lawmakers and communities can do to protect pregnant people’s health and wellbeing.

The Southwest Women’s Law Center is committed to keeping women and girls in New Mexico safe and healthy. Please make a gift today and help us continue our important work, such as preventing pregnant people from being surveilled. Thank you!

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In the News: Crisis Pregnancy Centers Endanger Women’s Health—With Taxpayer Dollars and Without Oversight

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10/29/2021 by Carrie N. Baker and Carly Thomsen via Ms. Magazine
Photo: More than 2,500 anti-abortion centers are currently operating throughout the United States. (NARAL Pro-Choice America / Flickr)

“Modern CPCs are plugged into the global anti-abortion movement’s sophisticated digital infrastructure, which facilitates expansion, client surveillance, and systemic, coordinated promotion of anti-abortion disinformation.”

—The Alliance, “Designed to Deceive”

While all eyes are on the Texas abortion ban and two Supreme Court cases poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, a new report shines light on the less visible side of the anti-abortion movement: “crisis pregnancy centers” preying on low-income women—and particularly Black women—with false promises, dangerous misinformation and stigmatizing judgment.

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Report Shows Anti-Abortion Organizations Mislead Clients, Provide Dangerous “Medication,” and Offer Few Legitimate Services

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CONTACT: Terrelene Massey, 505-244-0502

ALBUQUERQUE, NM—The Southwest Women’s Law Center joins the Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality today in releasing a report, “Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center Industry in Nine States.”

This report sheds light on crisis pregnancy center (CPC) activities and funding sources. Combined with high-profile legislative and legal battles, CPCs are the centerpiece of an extreme decades-long anti-abortion strategy.

The report shows that CPCs don’t offer legitimate healthcare and resources. Instead, CPCs target their deceptive marketing toward pregnant people of color and pregnant people with lower incomes and provide few or no real medical services. CPCs also systematically mislead clients about the services they provide, potentially resulting in delayed care and unnecessary risks to the health of their clients.

The report, which details the activities of CPCs in New Mexico, finds:

  • The promotion of misleading and biased medical claims to coerce and manipulate pregnant people away from obtaining an abortion and contraception;
  • The widespread promotion of abortion pill reversal, a dangerous and unscientific procedure that creates stigma and threatens pregnant peoples’ health;
  • A lack of licensed medical professionals at the facilities and a lack of real medical services provided at CPCs;
    and
  • A vast digital infrastructure with explicit links to the anti-abortion movement that targets and harasses pregnant people with lower incomes and pregnant people of color.

“This is yet another barrier for women and girls to access objective, reproductive services, and science-based information,” said Terrelene Massey, Executive Director of the Southwest Women’s Law Center. “Pregnant people deserve the best available medical advice, and CPCs are not providing that. What they are providing is misinformation, which is dangerous.”

The report recommends that New Mexico take the following actions to protect pregnant people’s health and increase accountability and transparency for CPCs operating in our state:

  • New Mexico policymakers should ban the use of non-diagnostic aka “vanity” ultrasounds/sonography;
  • Create a mechanism to provide free or low-cost diapers to low-income New Mexicans;
  • Increase the number of months for post-partum Medicaid coverage from three to 12 months;
  • Include grief counseling as a mandatory mental health insurance benefit to any family who has lost a child, whether through stillbirth, SIDS, miscarriage, or abortion;
  • Make it easier to apply for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act by including a box to check on state tax forms giving permission to check financial eligibility;
  • Protect clients by prohibiting abortion pill reversal and extending HIPAA-like protections to people served by non-profits providing pregnancy-related services;
  • Increase accountability and transparency for CPCs that receive state support;
  • Eliminate barriers that make healthcare unaffordable and otherwise inaccessible for pregnant people and parents; and
  • Address gaps in reproductive healthcare that CPCs exploit.

Even in states like ours with strong legal protections for abortion, the proliferation of CPCs threatens access to abortion care and contraception, especially for lower-income people and people of color. This demands a response that goes beyond Roe v. Wade and addresses the real barriers that pregnant people face when trying to access abortion care.

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View Documents and Resources at The Alliance State Advocates

Southwest Women’s Law Center

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Official Statement on Texas Senate Bill 8

The Southwest Women’s Law Center (SWLC) is outraged and saddened that women’s health, fundamental freedoms, and constitutional rights continue to be attacked in America. On September 1, 2021, Senate Bill 8 took effect in Texas. This bill is aimed at banning safe abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around 6-weeks’ gestation.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2018 more than 90% of abortions were performed around or before 13-weeks’ gestation. Most women seeking abortions do not know they are pregnant until after the 6 -week mark. Texas Senate Bill 8 doesn’t stop abortion. This bill only makes abortions harder to obtain and will endanger the lives of women in Texas.

This has been a consistent effort by lawmakers and anti-abortion zealots in Texas over the last several decades. In 2013, lawmakers attempted a similar abortion ban known as House Bill 2. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the ban was unconstitutional in 2017. But the damage was already done to abortion access in Texas. As a result, less than 20 abortion clinics exist today in Texas. Now, lawmakers in Texas have taken further action and have banned abortions after 6-weeks with the passing of Senate Bill 8.

Under Senate Bill 8, seeking an abortion is not criminalized. However, those who assist the person or perform the abortion may face civil liability. Worse, this law actively encourages private citizens, with no standing, to act as bounty hunters by awarding them $10,000 if they successfully sue another person for providing abortion or assisting someone who gets an abortion after 6-weeks’ gestation.

This abortion ban is intentionally designed to overwhelm clinics in the state with lawsuits and legal bills and force them to shut down. Due to structural racism and inequities, laws like Texas’ abortion ban disproportionately harms people of color, people with low incomes, and those living in rural areas. This bill will effectively end safe abortion access in Texas. Unfortunately, these bans will not stop in Texas. Oklahoma passed a similar bill that is expected to go into effect on November 1, 2021. The Oklahoma bill makes performing an abortion a homicide. Florida is now also considering a bill like the abortion ban in Texas. Women in New Mexico are currently immune from the laws in other states. But this does not mean we should sit by and watch our sisters in other states suffer. We at the

Southwest Women’s Law Center is involved in efforts to support those seeking safe abortions and encourage others to help however they can. Organizations Below is a list of organizations currently engaged in the fight for Women’s access to safe and legal reproductive health services:

OrganizationWhat they are doingWebsite
ACLUPursing a lawsuit regarding the Texas safe abortion ban.aclu.org
Fund Texas
Choice		Provides travel and accommodation assistance to Texas residents.fundtexaschoice.org
Lilith FundProvides financial assistance and emotional supportlilithfund.org
Avow and Lilith
Fund		Provides location of clinics, funding information, free legal help for pregnant minors, counseling, and other help.needabortion.org
National Network of Abortion FundsProvides a list of organizations that can help fund abortion in all 50 states.abortionfunds.org/need-abortion

We encourage supporters to contact the organizations directly to provide monetary support.

Download PDF Statement

We are hiring!

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The Southwest Women’s Law Center is looking for a Development Specialist to help us build our fundraising capacity from the ground up.

Established in 2005, the Southwest Women’s Law Center (SWLC) works on issues that impact women and girls around reproductive rights, economic security, and gender discrimination in New Mexico.

We are looking for a donor relations/fundraising professional who has a passion for our mission and vision and is excited to share it with the community.

As a small nonprofit, the SWLC relies heavily on grants to allow us to do our work and we are looking to expand our operations

View Details and Apply

How Indigenous Women Repealed New Mexico’s Longstanding Abortion Ban

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Via Bustle, By Jennifer Gerson

When Terrelene Massey watched New Mexico’s bill to repeal the state’s abortion ban die in the state House in 2019, she was struck by what she calls a “convenient argument” made by some legislators: that they couldn’t vote in favor of the bill because their Native and Indigenous constituents were opposed to it. These legislators — by and large non-native — said their constituents’ cultural practices and spiritual beliefs were at odds with the pro-abortion measure.

Massey, the executive director of the Southwest Women’s Law Center, knew this couldn’t be true. From her own lived experience as a Navajo woman, and her professional experiences as an advocate for Indigenous women in the Southwest,she’d seen firsthand how her peers value body sovereignty as part of their spiritual traditions, and how Indigenous people throughout the region had longstanding, ancestral practices for delivering abortion care.

“Maybe it’s because I am Native American, I am more attuned to seeing what’s missing when we’re not at the table and people trying to fill in our voices for us — and filling that space with inaccuracies and myths,” Massey, who had advocated for the 2019 bill’s passage, tells Bustle.

Jennifer Gerson, Author, Bustle.com

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