Motion to Discharge
Floor Speech
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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, across this country, Americans are facing aggressive attacks on their reproductive freedom. An extremist Supreme Court and radical rightwing politicians have made clear that they see women as second-class citizens and that government--government; not the person who is pregnant but government--should be making decisions about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
In this extraordinary moment, we must do everything we can to ensure that patients get the healthcare and reproductive services they need. That includes protecting patients from the deceptive practices of some so-called crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs.
Nationwide, there are over 2,500 known CPCs, although some claim that number is closer to about 4,000. Before Roe was overturned, over 16 million women of reproductive age lived closer to a crisis pregnancy center than to an abortion clinic. Now, some estimate that as many as 34 million women do. Today in Massachusetts, CPCs outnumber true abortion clinics by about 3 to 1.
CPCs often lure women seeking legitimate reproductive care, including abortions, into their facilities by advertising themselves as comprehensive reproductive healthcare providers, but this is flatly untrue. Many of these CPCs are not healthcare providers, and they often operate specifically to deceive pregnant women, with the goal of preventing them from having abortions.
CPC websites often feature images of people in white lab coats and promises of services like ultrasounds or STD tests. Yet CPCs rarely employ licensed physicians or offer a full range of reproductive health services. According to one study, 84 percent of CPCs had no physician and 75 percent had no registered nurse even affiliated with the staff. In fact, of the staff that did have some medical training, most work part time or as volunteers. As for the services they provide, the same study found that only 1 out of 607 crisis pregnancy centers provided contraceptive care and 95 percent of CPC offered no prenatal care-- none, zero. Most have no doctors, no nurses, and offer no medical care, but they sure have a lot of medical opinions. Nearly two-thirds promoted medically unsound claims, such as offering information about unproven and unscientific abortion pill reversal treatments.
Deception is at the heart of the operation for many CPCs. The director of a crisis pregnancy center in Texas explained to the Washington Post how she revamped operations so her center could pull in more people who were seeking an abortion. The director paid thousands of dollars to ensure that searches for phrases like ``need an abortion'' would lead people to her center, and she filled the website with phrases like ``I want an abortion'' and promised ``CONFIDENTIAL ABORTION CONSULTATION--NO COST TO YOU.'' The website is so deceptive that the director said she even receives angry calls from anti-abortion advocates who want to know why her center even talks about abortion, to which she replies: ``How else do you get an abortion-minded girl to know that you are there?''
Deception is wrong. No one should be deceived directly or indirectly about the services they can access or the risks of receiving care. That is particularly true for someone under great stress and time constraints who is coping with an unplanned pregnancy.
That is why I am glad to introduce the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act with Senator Menendez and why I am joining him today in calling up this legislation for a vote. Our bill directs the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit deceptive or misleading advertising related to the provision of abortion services. It also empowers the Commission to enforce these rules and collect penalties from organizations that violate the law. This is far from a radical proposal. For more than 100 years, the FTC has been authorized to prosecute entities that use deceptive practices.
And let me be clear. Any crisis pregnancy center that operates fairly, disseminates factual information, and is clear about what services it does and does not provide would be free to continue its work.
This bill is not about preventing parents from receiving diapers or other supplies if they have chosen to continue a pregnancy. This is about organizations that deliberately deceive women and girls who are seeking help to terminate a pregnancy. Unfortunately, deception is at the heart of the typical CPC's business model.
As the director of a CPC explained, the deception begins when women search for an abortion provider. The deception then continues once women walk through the doors of a crisis pregnancy center.
I just want to tell you a bit about the experience of a young woman living in Massachusetts who visited a crisis pregnancy center earlier this year. After finding the facility, which promised a ``free abortion consultation,'' this woman was asked to fill out forms to disclose personal information. She was repeatedly lied to about how far along she was in her pregnancy. She was told falsely that terminating her pregnancy would increase her risk of breast cancer and depression and that an abortion could mean that she could never become pregnant in the future. Sadly, her experience is not unique.
Here is the kicker. Women and girls visiting CPCs, like this young woman, often fill out forms and answer questionnaires requesting both personal identification and personal health information, which women provide because they believe they are in a medical facility that will protect their privacy. But because CPCs are not healthcare providers, these women have no legal protection, and these centers have no legal obligation to protect those data. These unlicensed facilities are not subject to Federal privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. This means that crisis pregnancy centers could pass along private information about who was seeking an abortion, where that person lives, and so on--information that, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, is particularly dangerous.
The evidence of abuse is overwhelming. It is time to crack down on deceptive and misleading practices that many crisis pregnancy centers employ because the last thing that a woman seeking reproductive care should have to worry about is whether she is being tricked, lied to, or deceived about the medical care she seeks.
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Ms. WARREN. Could I ask a question then because I am a little confused by what has just happened here. I presume deception is wrong whoever does it. So if we just said no deception around pregnancy services, would you be willing to support this?
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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President.
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Ms. WARREN. Yes.
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Ms. WARREN. Yes, I am asking you that question, Mr. President.
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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, then can I ask through the Presiding Officer another question, and that is if we are not talking about the fraud part, can we at least talk about collecting health information that any so-called crisis pregnancy center--I am sorry--is the Senator leaving, the one who said that it is important to protect private healthcare information?
That at least we could agree that private healthcare information--I guess the Senator is just going to walk off the floor.
So the question would have been how about agreeing that anyone who collects information about pregnancy and collects medical and personal information has to be bound by HIPAA so that that information is fully protected. That would be my question.
But since there is no one here to answer it on the Republican side, I guess we will have to leave it for today.
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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, this is a reminder again why I am so honored to fight alongside Senator Menendez.
I don't think anyone should be deceived, and particularly a woman who is seeking information about termination of a pregnancy, and I don't believe anyone's private medical information should be shared.
The idea that these crisis pregnancy centers gather information from women who believe they are giving it to a medical provider and that that information will be protected and that that is not the case is truly despicable.
Thank you again, Senator Menendez.
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