Attribution: Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
Wisconsin elected liberal Judge Susan Crawford to the State Supreme Court last spring, handing conservative pro-lifer Brad Schimel—whose campaign was bankrolled by billionaire Trump crony Elon Musk—a resounding defeat.
One of the main issues in that election was abortion. Justice Crawford has a strong history of supporting reproductive rights. She represented Planned Parenthood in actions where outside parties have sought to limit abortion rights and was also a vocal opponent to the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe -v- Wade. Because two cases challenging the Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law were pending before the state Supreme Court, Ms. Crawford’s election—and likely support of these challenges—seemed to be a pivotal victory for women’s reproductive rights in Wisconsin. And it was.
But unfortunately, abortion access is currently still difficult in Wisconsin. The Republican state legislature has been busy the past decade enacting a number of laws restricting it. According to the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity, or CORE, “The (Wisconsin) laws take multiple forms, including insurance and funding restrictions; a two-visit mandatory waiting period; multiple in-person counseling, consent, and testing requirements; and gestational limits.”
These measures affect the poor in particular; Medicaid is restricted from paying for abortions. And, under Wisconsin state law, insurance plans for public employees as well as plans available through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace are also restricted from providing abortion services. And because of these restrictions, only four abortion clinics are currently open in the state of Wisconsin. These are located in Dane, Milwaukee, and Sheboygan counties, meaning that women living in rural areas have to travel up to six hours for medical care—and bear the expenses for travel and lodging. Right now, nearly seventy percent of Wisconsin women live in a county without a clinic.
And that’s not all. Women who are facing one of the most difficult decisions in their lives are being manipulated and lied to—legally. Women who may be frightened, alone, or confused about their pregnancies are encouraged to turn to “pregnant resource centers” or “care centers” which masquerade as medical clinics—but which are anything but. These facilities, known as Crisis Pregnancy Centers, exist solely to deny abortions, and they resort to manipulation, fear, and intimidation to do it.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or CPCs, are—according to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—“facilities that represent themselves as legitimate reproductive health care clinics providing care for pregnant people but actually aim to dissuade people from accessing certain types of reproductive health care, including abortion care and even contraceptive options.”
CPCs look like clinics. Their volunteers act like clinicians, offering services like free ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, STD testing, and estimates (usually inflated) on gestational progress. They try to play the part, but they are not medical facilities. They are antiabortion propaganda centers designed to dissuade patients from exercising their right to choose. Many are funded by and organized through pro-life religious groups like Heartbeat International and Care Net. These centers are often designed to resemble and are deliberately situated near actual abortion clinics to divert women seeking abortions into their non-medical facilities.
According to The American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, “lay volunteers who are not licensed clinicians at CPCs often wear white coats and see women in exam rooms. They also purport to provide medical advice on a variety of issues, including sexually transmitted infections, early pregnancy, and abortion.” Volunteers over-emphasize the medical risk of abortions and cite false claims of links between abortion and breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness. Some CPCs use graphic visuals to deter those seeking to terminate their pregnancies. If patients refuse their services, CPCs will typically refuse to refer women to medical centers or abortion clinics.
National antiabortion organizations like the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, Heartbeat International, and Care Net are affiliated with these “counseling centers”, providing funding, ultrasound training and legal support. The tactics they condone in the CPCs they sponsor are thinly veiled manipulations intended to shame, intimidate, and frighten women into making reproductive choices that may not be in their best interest. CPC workers are not subject to HIPAA regulations and so are not required to maintain medical standards of confidentiality. In some cases, patient information has been forwarded to emergency contacts and outside organizations.
CPCs have been criticized by lawmakers, physicians, academics, and reproductive rights advocates for their misleading and unethical practices. Volunteers and the centers give the false impression they are a medical facility, giving rise to a number of concerns. “CPCs engage in counseling that is misleading or false. Despite claims to the contrary, these centers do not meet the standard of patient-centered, quality medical care. The counseling provided on abortion and contraception by CPCs falls outside accepted medical standards and guidelines for providing evidence-based information and treatment options. (AMAJE).”
Crisis Pregnancy Centers can hardly be called ethical. They masquerade as medical clinics, deliberately creating an illusion of a licensed health center, yet they do not abide by accepted medical standards. Their care—such as it is—is not patient-centered but instead serves to further their antiabortion ideologies.
In fact, CPC practices may directly cause patient harm. “Pregnant people seeking confirmation of pregnancy, answers to questions, and decision-making support may seek care at a CPC without realizing that the information they receive is intended to discourage them from abortion. This can delay their ability to seek nonjudgmental, compassionate, respectful care from a health care professional (ACOG).”
Which is precisely a CPC strategy, especially in states where there are gestational age bans. Stall until it’s too late to abort. And this of course begs the question of their post-natal care on women who—on their advice—followed through with their pregnancies. Do they help the family financially? Emotionally? Is there any post-natal care? CPCs also tend to target young women, minority populations, and the underprivileged, exacerbating health care disparities for marginalized peoples. In other words, these centers prey on the weak and underinformed.
According to a 2018 NIH report, over 2500 CPCs were operating in the US compared to only 800 abortion clinics. Since the 2022 Dobbs decisions overturning Roe -v- Wade, the number of clinics has dropped significantly. Today, in Wisconsin, there are only four of them, but according to CORE, there are over 60 CPCs currently running in Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, at this point, little can be done to regulate CPCs. They are not subject to the same privacy laws as medical establishments; most states do not have the same tools to regulate CPCs as they do for medical clinics.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will probably uphold a lower court ruling that the 1849 abortion rule does not apply to consensual abortions and will hopefully rule that the right to abortion should be enshrined in the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin.
But even if these rulings come to pass, women in Wisconsin seeking to exercise their reproductive rights still must navigate a maze of restrictive and draconian laws: a two-visit waiting period, counseling, and insurance restrictions—to name just a few. Couple that with the fact there are only four clinics in the state and abortion becomes much more difficult than it should be.
CPCs do not help. They should be regulated and made to stop giving vulnerable women their misleading advice, stating false claims, and engaging in deceptive advertising. Our citizens deserve better. At-risk and vulnerable citizens should not be bamboozled into doing something they will live have to with the rest of their lives. We need to regulate these organizations and tell our state representatives to cease their funding.
Reproductive rights—health rights—are on President Trump’s chopping block. He has severely defunded the NIH, the CDC, and is threatening to hamstring Medicare. These measures will not only affect reproductive rights, but everyone—children, men, the disabled, and the elderly.
Go to the rallies. Demonstrate. Call a town hall. Provide an empty chair. Make your representatives accountable. Visit a local CPC and find out for yourself what they do.
The current Republican majority in the Wisconsin legislature will do nothing to further reproductive rights; they never have, and they never will. It is of the utmost importance to support Democratic candidates for the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate. And all politics start at home. We must vote out the local school board members attempting to suppress sexual education curriculum and bring our children back into the twenty-first century.
The ruling overturning 1849 Wisconsin abortion law will probably be upheld, but that is only the beginning. We have a lot more work to do.