Fake Health Clinics Are Tricking College Students

Anti-abortion "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" have developed new ways to lure you in—and they're pulling out all the stops.

After having a few new sexual partners since her last STI screening, Millie Zehnder, then a 19-year-old sophomore at Florida State University, wanted to do the responsible thing and get tested again. She immediately thought of the clinic she walked by every day on her way to class. Each Wednesday, at an outreach event for campus organizations, smiling representatives from this health center advertised free or low-cost pregnancy and STI testing. Usually they wore scrubs. The popcorn machine on their table emitted the comforting aroma of a movie theater. Millie thought they seemed nice.

So she booked an appointment. But when she got to their office—right across from campus—she was surprised to see a Bible quote in flowery script on the wall. Soon, she was ushered into a “counseling” room, asked about her religious views, and told the story of Adam and Eve. Then, while her STI tests were prepared, a staffer gave her an iPad loaded with a slideshow that featured graphic images of botched abortions and untreated STIs. “They showed me gruesome photos and told me sex is bad and abortion is bad,” Millie says. At one point, they asked her to sign a chastity pledge. “I left that place crying. They wanted me to comeback for a follow-up, and I was like, ‘No way.’”

Millie had been roped in by a crisis pregnancy center, or CPC—one of approximately 2,750 anti-abortion clinics across the country that offer free or low-cost medical services with the intent of convincing women not to terminate their pregnancies. Often unlicensed, largely unregulated, and staffed mostly by volunteers (versus doctors or nurses), many use deceptive marketing, shame tactics, and incomplete or just plain wrong health info to make their case. Because they don’t offer a full range of medical services or even birth control, they’re not real clinics—and they may prevent a woman from getting the care she actually wants or needs (some CPCs have been accused of lying about how far along women’s pregnancies are to get them to delay their decision until an abortion becomes harder and more expensive to obtain).

CPCs are also developing apps. Obria Direct, run by a multi state network of CPCs, seeks to “intersect these girls while they search online” for information related to unintended pregnancy, according to its website. The app seems to be replicating Planned Parenthood’s strategy, which includes live chats with providers. Young women may not even realize they’re communicating with an anti-choice group that doesn’t actually offer birth control or abortions.

That is the scariest part, according to Justine Sandoval, an organizer for NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado. “These fake clinics may look like the opposite of the in-your-face fetus pictures you see outside abortion clinics,” she says. “But they’re the same people—just with better branding.”