Crisis Pregnancy Center Worker Told a Woman Her IUD Was 'Your Baby'

A new investigation from NARAL Pro-Choice California finds that—surprise!—crisis pregnancy centers are still lying to women, delivering their trademark mixture of shame, guilt, misinformation and outright lies to persuade them not to have abortions. An undercover NARAL worker was told by a CPC employee that her IUD, visible on an ultrasound, was “your baby.”

NARAL does an annual look at crisis pregnancy centers, namely how they have always been and continue to be full of shit. This year’s investigation, released in a report last week, says the group’s six investigators made 49 visits to CPCs across California. They found a fairly standardized script at each place about the “dangers” of abortion:

In 91 percent of the centers visited, this script included telling our investigator that having an abortion was linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility, miscarriage, and/or the made-up “post-abortion depression” that results in suicide. These are blatant lies that have been disproved and rejected by the medical community.

One common scare tactic focused on the ability of a woman to have a healthy pregnancy in the future if she accessed abortion care. “She told me that for some women, they dilate them too fast and they might become … not infertile, but in later cases … they might miscarry a lot because the cervix might not close up all the way. So I might have a lot of miscarriages if I aborted the baby.”

For organizations that claim to offer pregnancy counseling, they know surprisingly little about pregnancy, abortion, and birth control. The use of birth control is intentionally confused with abortion at CPCs. Our investigation found that at 63% of centers visited, the investigator was given misinformation about birth control and Plan B, the morning after pill.

One investigator says every CPC “strongly insisted” she have an ultrasound. In only one instance did a CPC worker mistake her IUD for a fetus (maybe the worker thought she’d been impregnated by a telephone pole?). That still really seems like one time too many. You can read the full report here if you feel like being not even remotely surprised.