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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

NM Political Report: Advocates for abortion ban repeal start off a first full week of New Mexico Legislature

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Via Susan Dunlap, NM Political Report

Unlike 2019 when the New Mexico State Senate blocked repealing the 1969 abortion ban, more than half of the 2021 state Senate have signed on to cosponsor SB 10, this year’s effort.

SB 10, sponsored by state Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, is a bill that will run parallel to HB 7, sponsored by state House Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, D-Mesilla. Co-sponsor and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D- Santa Fe, said during a press conference Monday morning held by Respect New Mexico Women, a coalition of nonprofit organizations, that 25 state senators have signed onto the bill for the 2021 Legislature. 

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Abortion Care is Always Essential

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As 2020 finally comes to an end (thank goodness!) and we prepare to celebrate the December holidays in safe and thoughtful ways, we at the Southwest Women’s Law Center turn our attention to the upcoming legislative session, which begins at the end of January. While it is still unclear how the 2021 legislative session will proceed vis a vis Covid-19, one thing is certain, this will be a consequential legislative session.

The SWLC is involved in several pieces of legislation: the Paid Family Medical Leave Act which supports New Mexico workers who experience a serious medical condition, have or adopt a child, or need to care for someone experiencing a serious medical condition and a bill that temporarily expands Unemployment Insurance due to a public health emergency, such as COVID-19. The SWLC also supports a Paid Sick Leave bill to support workers so they do not have to go to work while they are ill and of course, legislation to repeal New Mexico’s dormant Abortion Ban.

The Abortion Ban passed in 1969 and was found for the most part to be unconstitutional in 1973 as a result of Roe v. Wade. The Abortion Ban is described as “dormant” because only two provisions of the law remain in effect, a religious refusal provision and a provision requiring licensed physicians to perform abortion procedures. The problem is that the Abortion Ban is still on the books in its entirety, including those provisions that were found unconstitutional in 1973. A complete and total repeal of the Abortion Ban is more important now than ever before.

The most devasting thing the outgoing Trump administration was able to achieve during the last four years was to stack the federal courts with ultra-right-wing attorneys in judicial positions in federal district, appellate and the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court now sits with a 6-3 conservative majority. The effects of stacking the federal bench will be felt for decades.

Roe v. Wade, decided by the Supreme Court in 1973, established the right to abortion care and is the only thing that stands between New Mexico in 2020, where decisions about when and if to parent are made freely, without interference by the state and New Mexico in 1969, where a panel of strangers will decide if you receive abortion care under a very limited set of circumstances and where medical providers could be criminally prosecuted for providing abortion care. Given the new conservative majority in the Supreme Court, it is a near certainty that they will take the first opportunity to overturn Roe. At the very moment Roe v. Wade is overturned, New Mexico will be thrown back to 1969 and the landscape relating to the provision of abortion care in New Mexico will be turned on its head. That is why it is so important to repeal the Abortion Ban in its entirety this upcoming legislative session. Time is literally running out.

We must remain vigilant. In addition to the overall threat to abortion rights in New Mexico due to the near-certain overturning of Roe v Wade, there are those opportunists who would attempt to capitalize on the COVID-19 pandemic and claim that abortion care is not “essential” and thus abortion care providers should be shut down during the pendency of the pandemic. This is of course nonsense. What could be more essential when it comes to the consequences of being denied abortion care? Yet there are also those who are so desperate and hateful that they argue healthcare workers in New Mexico who bravely and tirelessly stand up to COVID -19 every day should not be called heroes because they work in a facility where abortion care is provided. That type of reasoning can only be called twisted. Where does it end?

The SWLC urges New Mexicans to throw their support behind legislation to repeal the Abortion Ban in its entirety during this upcoming legislative session. You can find your legislator at Find My Legislator. It has to be done this legislative session. If Roe is overturned before the repeal of New Mexico’s Abortion Ban, at the risk of sounding dramatic, life as we know it will change. Please contact your legislators and make sure that you are heard during this very dangerous time in New Mexico. We are counting on you.

To donate to our efforts to repeal New Mexico’s dormant abortion ban, please visit our donation page.

SWLC Statement Regarding Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania

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Release July 9, 2020

The Supreme Court of the United States (the “Court”) decided the contraceptive access case, Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, which upheld two Trump administration regulations allowing employers to deny contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for “sincerely held” religious or moral reasons. This expands the exemptions that already exist for churches and other houses of worship, religiously-affiliated non-profits, and closely held corporations whose religious beliefs equate some forms of contraception with abortion, to now include for-profit companies and any employer that claims to have religious and/or moral objections to the provision of birth control. The Court cloaks this decision with the justification of religious liberty, but the impact will be to deny women, specifically low income and women of color, access to family planning services that are desperately needed.

This ruling will cause 70,000 to 126,000 women to lose coverage for contraception at work, and it remains unclear whether insurers or states will pick up the tab, or if the affected women will be forced to pay out-of-pocket for their contraception. When birth control isn’t covered by insurance, women are put in the position of having to choose between paying for their contraceptive prescription or paying for pressing essentials, like rent or groceries. We know that these kinds of decisions lead to lapses in birth control use, which contributes to high rates of unintended pregnancy in the United States. This is of course quite ironic, given the Trump administration’s attempts to pack the federal courts with anti-choice judges. Wendy Basgall, staff attorney, says this sends the following message: “We are not going to help you prevent unplanned pregnancies, nor will we allow you to choose to terminate an unplanned pregnancy that resulted from your inability to pay for contraception.”

Access to contraceptives is an essential part of bodily autonomy, giving individuals a say in whether and when to expand their families. Yet the Court’s decision effectively allows bosses to dictate whether their employees can access contraceptives—this isn’t a comprehensive approach to health care.

New Mexico has made the importance of contraceptive coverage clear: in our state, insurance plans that cover prescription drugs must include contraceptives with no out-of-pocket payment. The only exemption is for religious entities. However, this ruling may open the door for nearly any New Mexico employer to claim a moral exemption, leaving their employees in the lurch. Terrelene Massey, Executive Director states, “The Southwest Women’s Law Center believes that contraceptive access is a right and is essential to the well-being of New Mexico’s women and girls.  We also believe that creating a health insurance gap is bad policy and bad healthcare. We need to protect this access for all New Mexicans.”If your employer refuses to cover birth control because of a religious or moral objection, we want to hear from you! Contact us at info@swwomenslaw.org or 505-244-0502.

1— 591 U.S. ___ (2020). This case is being decided together with Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Pennsylvania et al. No. 19-454.
2 — Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.C. 682 (2014)
3 — https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/supreme-court-birth-control-obamacare.html
4 — 1978 NMSA §59A-22-42.

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