CPC Research & Reports

Designed to Deceive

“Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are anti-abortion organizations that seek to reach low-income people facing unintended pregnancies to prevent them from accessing abortion and contraception. CPCs advance this mission by using deceptive and coercive tactics and medical disinformation, and misleadingly presenting themselves as medical facilities. The modern CPC industry, a well-resourced arm of the global anti-abortion movement, is rapidly expanding while evading public accountability, despite increasing reliance on public funds.”

—Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center Industry in Nine States

Investigative Reports

Crisis Pregnancy Centers Lie: The Insidious Threat to Reproductive Freedom, NARAL Pro-Choice America, 2015
Infographic: National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy

What Medical Organizations Say

American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG)

Issue Brief: Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Oct. 2022

“People seeking reproductive health care must have access to comprehensive, evidence-based, nonjudgmental health care and information from qualified professionals, regardless of whether they decide to continue a pregnancy or seek abortion care. It's important that people understand their options and know their resources—including how to recognize and avoid facilities, such as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), run by people who operate unethically and with the intention to dissuade, deter, or prevent them from seeking certain reproductive health care options.”

Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine & North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology:

A Joint Position Statement on Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the United States:

Lack of Adherence to Medical and Ethical Practice Standards, Dec. 2019

  • CPCs pose risk by failing to adhere to medical and ethical practice standards;

  • Governments should only support health programs that provide accurate, comprehensive information;

  • CPCs and individuals who provide CPC services should be held to established standards of ethics and medical care;

  • Schools should not outsource sexual education to CPCs or other entities that do not provide accurate and complete health information;

  • Search engines and digital platforms should enforce policies against misleading advertising by CPCs; and

  • Health professionals should educate themselves, and young people about CPCs and help young people identify safe, quality sources of sexual and reproductive health information and care.

Scholarly Research

The Problems with Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Reviewing the Literature and Identifying New Directions for Future Research by Melissa Montoya, Colleen Judge-Golden & Jonas Swartz, 2022, International Journal of Women's Health 

Patient Experiences at California Crisis Pregnancy Centers: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Online Crowd-Sourced Reviews, 2010-2019 by Elaine Chan et al., 2022, Southern Medical Journal

Animating and sustaining outrage: The Place of Crisis Pregnancy Centers in Abortion Justice by Carly Thomsen et al., 2022, Human Geography

U.S. Anti-Abortion Ideology on the Move: Mobile Crisis Pregnancy Centers as Unruly, Unmappable, Ungovernable by Carly Thomsen et al., 2022, Political Geography

Comparing Website Identification for Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Abortion Clinics by Jonas Swartz et al., 2021, Women's Health Issues

“Gummy Bears” and “Teddy Grahams”: Ultrasounds as religious biopower in Crisis Pregnancy Centers by Kendra Hutchens, 2021, Social Science and Medicine

Truth and Transparency in Crisis Pregnancy Centers by Carly Polcyn et al., 2020, Women's Health Reports

Pregnant Women's Reasons for and Experiences of Visiting Antiabortion Pregnancy Resource Centers by Katrina Kimport, 2020, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health

Crisis at the Pregnancy Center: Regulating Pseudo-Clinics and Reclaiming Informed Consent by Teneille R. Brown, 2019, Yale Journal of Law & Feminism

Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Faith Centers Operating in Bad Faith by Sonya Borrero, Susan Frietsche & Christine Dehlendorf, 2019, Journal of General Internal Medicine

Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Legal But Unethical by Amy Bryant & Jonas Swartz, 2018, AMA Journal of Ethics

Quality of Information Available Online for Abortion Self-Referral by Laura E. Dodge et al, 2018, Obstetrics & Gynecology

Contraceptive Information on Pregnancy Resource Center Websites: A Statewide Content Analysis by Andrea Swartzendruber et al., 2018, Contraception

Racial Reconciliation or Spiritual Smokescreens?: Blackwashing the Crisis Pregnancy Center Movement by Kimberly Kelly & Amanda Gochanour, 2018, Qualitative Sociology

What Women Seek from a Pregnancy Resource Center by Katrina Kimport, J Parker Dockery & Shelly Dodson, 2016, Contraception

Crisis Pregnancy Center Websites: Information, Misinformation and Disinformation by Amy Bryant et al., 2014, Contraception

The Spread of ‘Post Abortion Syndrome’ as Social Diagnosis by Kimberly Kelly, 2014, Social Science & Medicine