JERSEY CITY, NJ (Hudson County) — U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer Monday sounded the alarm on anti-choice Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) posing as reproductive healthcare providers across New Jersey and highlighted their intentionally deceptive marketing practices.
“I urge everyone to raise their voices about Crisis Pregnancy Centers across the state, so no women in New Jersey ever suffer from their intentionally deceptive tactics. If we don’t stand up now and make our voices heard, far-right extremists will continue to advance their agenda. I’ll say it again: no one should get between a woman, her doctor, and her faith,” Gottheimer said. “This is just common sense, and what most Americans know is right. We can’t allow extremism to win. We must fight to defend a woman’s right to choose and access safe healthcare.”
The dangers of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs):
- CPCs pose as a healthcare clinic with doctors and nurses, but are often not staffed by licensed medical professionals.
- CPCs regularly ignore medical ethics and are staffed by people with no medical background whose goal is to manipulate women with their own ideological agenda.
- New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a consumer alert, warning people that Crisis Pregnancy Centers do not provide health care. They are organizations that seek to prevent people from accessing reproductive health care and provide false or misleading information.
- CPCs lie about the risks associated with abortion, use aggressive tactics to manipulate women into changing their minds based on no medical information, and deceive women into thinking they’re too far along to legally get the care they need.
- CPCs promote dangerous medical misinformation such as abortion pill “reversal” — an unproven and unethical treatment. This so-called treatment can be potentially harmful by giving pregnant women misleading information that an abortion can be undone.
- In June, a woman sued a CPC for failing to diagnose her ectopic pregnancy, which resulted in an emergency surgery and the loss of her fallopian tube.
- CPCs don’t provide legitimate prenatal care or refer women to health clinics that would offer a full range of health services.
- CPCs locate their facilities near real healthcare clinics so their employees can physically divert women away from real healthcare providers.
Gottheimer action to combat CPCs includes:
- Gottheimer is helping lead the Stop Anti-abortion Disinformation Act in the House to prevent crisis pregnancy centers from spreading deceptive advertising about health care.
- This legislation directs the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit mis- and dis-information related to abortion services and authorizes the FTC to penalize organizations that break this rule.
- Gottheimer, with Congresswoman Angie Craig, sent a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, calling on him to stop the flow of federal tax dollars to Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs).
- Gottheimer urged his colleagues in Congress to vote against far-right extremist legislation that supports taxpayer dollars going to anti-choice Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC).
- Gottheimer sent a letter to the Governor and leaders in the State Legislature asking them to build on their good work ensuring New Jersey is a safe haven for a woman’s right to choose, by restricting crisis pregnancy centers’ deceptive marketing practices.
- Gottheimer also wrote to support state legislation to outlaw this type of advertising that masquerades as health care.
