An employee encounters the Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio: “It is disgusting to see abortion clinics and contraceptive services go through the doors,” said Ayla Krueger

The vice president of health services of the Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio said they have provided an array of misinformation, whether it is about abortion care or contraceptive services.

More than a half-dozen states bankroll crisis pregnancy centers at least partly with funds from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a federal welfare program. Those federal funds are sent to states as a block grant, which gives state officials wide latitude in how to spend it, including on programs like “alternatives to abortion” grants for crisis pregnancy centers.

Several women who went to state-funded crisis pregnancy centers told CNN they felt misled and manipulated by the groups, and disturbed that they were getting taxpayer money.

In the United States, abortion clinics outnumber crisis pregnancy centers. There were 790 abortion clinics operating in 2021, compared with about 2,600 crisis pregnancy centers, according to a database compiled by Reproaction, an abortion-rights group.

Multiple times a week, patients looking for Planned Parenthood mistakenly walk through PDHC’s doors, according to a Planned Parenthood clinician, Jennifer, who asked CNN not to use her last name out of security concerns. Some patients have said they were told by PDHC employees that abortion was not safe and they were forced to make an appointment for later in the day.

Ayla Krueger, a resident of Columbus, visited PDHC with a friend who was seeking an STD test. She said that during their hour-and-a-half visit, an employee claimed that condoms were only 50% effective, the spread of STDs could only be prevented if people followed “God’s plan” of avoiding sex before marriage, and that if a woman who has an STD gets an abortion, “your STDs travel up your cervix into your organs and could kill you.”

Krueger said he was dumbfounded by the encounter. “My heart was breaking, thinking about girls who don’t understand what they’re walking into there… and possibly getting coerced.”

Crisis Pregnancies: Taxpayer Money Invs, Krueger’s Suggestions, and other Drayton’s Misinformation

The center was not medically accurate according to experts. The risk of infections in abortion and pregnancy is very low, according to a professor at Duke University Medical Center. “Crisis pregnancy centers regularly overstate the risk of abortions and this is just one example of that.”

The center offers abortion pill reversal, as well as annual reports and pamphlets at the office. abortion reversal is a discredited treatment that is found to be harmful by many researchers and was denounced by medical groups. A clinical trial that wanted to study abortion reversal ended before the beginning of the year when participants began to suffer from hemorrhaging.

Kathy Scanlon, PDHC’s president, didn’t respond to CNN’s questions about Krueger’s allegations or abortion pill reversal.

The center provides free pregnant women with everything they need to cope with the unexpected baby, from parenting class and baby items to free pregnancy tests, according to an email written by Scanlon.

Similarly, a 2012 academic study of crisis pregnancy centers in North Carolina found that 86% of centers promoted false or misleading medical information on their websites.

The leaders of the crisis pregnancy center said they were working to help women. Peggy Hartshorn, who founded the Columbus center and is now the chair of Heartbeat International, one of the largest global networks of crisis pregnancy centers, said the allegations that the groups spread misinformation are “a false narrative.”

She said that the information her centers provide to clients is “very well-researched, medically referenced – we document everything with multiple sources.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/crisis-pregnancy-centers-taxpayer-money-invs/index.html

TANF in Pennsylvania is not giving away cash assistance to mothers with children in poverty: State Senator Robin Lundstrum, Real Alternatives, and an Ohio abortion veto

After the Supreme Court decision, an abortion ban went into effect in Ohio but is currently on hold. The clinic on the opposite side of town from the Ohio State University one that doesn’t do abortions referrals patients to a surgical center nearby that does.

There are pregnancy centers within walking distance of abortion clinics. A CNN analysis states more than 100 pregnancy centers in the country are within 200 meters of abortion clinics. Clinics are next to some states like Delaware, Indiana and Michigan.

While about 68% of families with children in poverty received cash assistance through TANF in 1996, when the program was created, that percentage declined to just 21% by 2020, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank. The percentage was even lower in some of the GOP-dominated states that use TANF funding to support crisis pregnancy centers, such as Texas and Louisiana.

Cash assistance is the most effective way to help families reduce poverty according to a study co-authored by AditiShrivastava. “We are seeing states spend less of their money directly on cash assistance, and we don’t think that is what the program should be doing.”

“If we are going to be the most pro-life state in the union, we have to be prepared when those mothers come to a facility and they need help,” Arkansas state Rep. Robin Lundstrum said at a legislative hearing about the state’s new program earlier this year.

Many of the appropriations are written into spending bills passed by GOP-dominated state legislatures. Pennsylvania has sent over $70 million to crisis pregnancy centers through Real Alternatives over the last 10 years, which is more than any other state.

A 2017 report by the state auditor general found that Real Alternatives used hundreds of thousands of dollars of the money it received from Pennsylvania “to fund its activities in other states,” in what the auditor said was an example of the group “siphoning funds intended to benefit Pennsylvania women.” Real Alternatives said in a statement that there was no proof of the allegations.

The contract between Michigan and Real Alternatives to distribute funding for crisis centers was canceled after the governor vetoed funding for it in 2019. In a letter about the veto, Whitmer thanked a watchdog group that had issued a report accusing the organization of only helping a fraction of the pregnant women it had agreed to support.

Real Alternatives, which also receives TANF money from Indiana, said the Michigan report was “riddled with inaccuracies, distortions, half-truths and defamatory statements.”

A bill that required crisis pregnancy centers to give only medically accurate information to their clients died multiple times in the Ohio legislature. The state’s GOP legislative leaders did not reply to questions.

Planned Parenthood also lost additional federal funding under Title X, a program that funds birth control and reproductive health services, under a Trump administration rule. But the organization started receiving that money again this year after the Biden administration reversed the rule.

Maria Gallo, a sexual and reproductive health epidemiologist at Ohio State University, said that state funding for crisis pregnancy centers shows how conservative lawmakers prioritize anti-abortion rhetoric over medical care for women.

That disparity is only likely to grow in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. Hartshorn, the chair of Heartbeat International, said the organization has created an online training program to help people open new pregnancy centers, especially in places without existing ones.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/crisis-pregnancy-centers-taxpayer-money-invs/index.html

The Center for Responsive Philanthropy: Fighting the COVID-19 Misinformation and Election Frauds on Latinos

A study by the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy found that the groups have taken in more and more money in recent years: They received over $1 billion in revenue in 2019, the most recent year data was available, compared to about $771 million in 2015.

Last year, a woman who asked to be identified by her middle name, Eve, had just lost her job when she suspected she might be pregnant. She and her boyfriend went to Women’s Care Center in Columbus after finding the group on Google. Money was tight, and she chose the center – which is receiving more than $700,000 from the state of Ohio in the current fiscal year – because it promised free pregnancy testing.

Eve inquired about an abortion after her test was positive. She said they handed her a pamphlet that warned her the procedure could cause infertility – though abortion doesn’t typically affect a person’s ability to become pregnant in the future. For three hours, Eve said the staff pressured her to carry the pregnancy to term.

A woman who got an abortion after leaving the center said it became very clear they were against the procedure quickly. The center didn’t respond to questions about Eve’s visit but said in an email they are “absolutely committed to accuracy, excellence and transparency in all we do.”

Just after news leaked in May that the Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v. Wade, Liz Lebrón and her colleagues noticed something unusual: a spike in false and misleading information on abortion being shared in Spanish on social media.

“Abortion was not one of our research priorities.” said Lebrn, who oversees the Latino Anti-disinformation Lab. After the leak it started popping up and it hasn’t slowed down.

The lab, a project from the national voter registration organization Voto Latino and the progressive group Media Matters for America were created in order to combat COVID-19 misinformation and election lies targeting Latinos.

The misinformation about abortion is running the gamut: The Floridans with Marco (Floridians with Marco) and a network of community activists

Lebrón says the misinformation she’s seeing runs the gamut — from posts that say abortion is no longer legal in a state where in fact it remains legal, to those that falsely say the procedure is not safe and can lead to harm or death. Tens of thousands of followers are being shared the falsehoods by accounts.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states that abortion is safe and essential to health care. With Roe struck down as of June 24, individual states determine abortion access — and abortion is currently legal in a majority of U.S. states.

“We’re hearing it from community activists on the ground. Rodrguez is the leader of a network of community activists that work in Florida, Texas, Virginia and New York.

Rodríguez says not all of the incorrect information is being spread with malicious intent: Laws are changing in many states, and some people are just sharing rumors that they think are true.

She cites, for example, a social media post by a group called Floridanos con Marco (Floridians with Marco) that targets Rep. Val Demings, the Democratic candidate for Senate running against Republican Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida. The post said that Demings supports funding abortions until the moment of birth. “And it’s like, oh, goodness,” Lebrón says. The right to abortion is up to the viability of the fetus, which can sometimes be as early as the 24th week of the pregnancy.

Latino voters care more about abortion than other voters, according to recent polls. A majority of Latino voters support the right to a legal abortion, but others don’t or are on the fence. Lebrón says some of the disinformation aims to sway voters seen as up for grabs.

The Latina doctor says that the Spanish-speaking Latina patients she helps get abortions are afraid because of the misinformation. Even though Illinois is an abortion safe haven, she says patients have told her they fear that getting the procedure will result in legal jeopardy.

Simon is concerned that such fears will keep people from seeking medical care when they need it — for example, if they’re having complications from a medication abortion or from an ectopic pregnancy that puts their life at risk. She’s worried that could result in more pregnancy-related deaths for Latinas, which have risen in recent years.

Simon says that this is a real problem because of the fact that people with less resources and less fear are the most vulnerable.

Advocates are combating the flood of disinformation. The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice hosts live streams of abortion news and trains local organizers on how to counter misinformation in their communities.

As for Simon, she’s tackling the problem one patient at a time. “It’s really important that we arm our patients and their loved ones with accurate health information,” she says, “because that’s how it spreads through the network.”