Video: Taxpayer Dollars So Fake Clinics Can Lie and Push Religion

When Crisis Pregnancy Centers get their hands on millions in federal and state dollars, they're not supposed to use that money to lie to women and promote religion. In practice, however, that's exactly what they do.

The video, from RH Reality Check and the Feminist Majority Foundation, looks at the lying lies of CPCs, including footage from inside one center where a counselor falsely tells a young women that an abortion will harm her long-term health and pressures her to turn to God. While these "fake clinics" go to great lengths to pass themselves off as legitimate medical institutions, setting up shop next to real doctor's offices, in fact most of their staff do not have medical training.

One college student points out in the video the alarming tactic of telling a woman she's not pregnant, when she is, endangers the health of the fetus — until a woman realizes she's been duped, she might engage in risky behaviors, such as drinking and smoking. The CPC wants to make it impossible for her to have an abortion within the legal time frame, but they don't even know that she would choose an abortion; if she's keeping the pregnancy, she wants to know the truth so as to protect the fetus' health.

Despite a Congressional report that found 87% of CPCs give out false or misleading information, they continue to get government money with little oversight. That's why we need to pressure Congress to pass truth-in-advertising legislation — requiring these Centers to own up to what services they actually provide and to stop lying to women — and to strip funds from "fake clinics" that exist to proselytize and manipulate women, while not providing any actual reproductive health support.