She Went Undercover to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. They Told Her Abortion Is Reversible.

Five anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers were visited by an investigative reporter in October, despite being funded by the state. She entered the clinics with her pregnant friend's urine, a button on her shirt that doubled as a camera, and scheduled appointments. Raisner told me in a phone interview that she refused to sign any paperwork that asked her not to record conversations. Raisner said that the anti- abortion movement has been filming for years and that they don't want to stoop to their level.

Raisner's experiences at theCPCs were captured in a video by Mayday Health. An employee starts spouting lies after she turns in a positive pregnancy test and says she is considering abortion. Raisner was warned that there was a lot of suicides after abortion and that it was a very common problem. Research shows that being denied an abortion negatively impacts someone's mental health, and over 95 percent of people who have abortions don't regret it. The employee warned Raisner that having an abortion could cause her to have an eating disorder. Several clinics said this, she said.

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In Mayday's video, the clinic worker emphasized the false claim that if Raisner used medication abortion, she had the option to "reverse" the abortion through a special pill. Anti-abortion activists are pushing a bogus, medically dangerous claim as medication abortion becomes more widely used.

Raisner said it was necessary to keep her emotions and anger at bay as the staff lied to her. She said that the longer she was in there, the more she would be able to record. For all the pregnant people who go to these centers and don't have the information, I needed to show the interactions that are taking place.

In the video, Raisner explains that it is common for staff at crisis pregnancy centers to pose as doctors in order to push false claims about abortion. The staffer Raisner interacts with proceeds to run through all the hits, including that abortion causes infertility and that medication abortion pills are unsafe because of high levels of hormones. Raisner said that they made it very tempting to lean on them, because they offer all the resources needed. They are fake medical clinics that are only interested in spreading lies to shame people away from abortion.

Raisner said it was as if all the employees were reading from the same script. Raisner said that conversations were almost identical when he told them he was thinking about abortion. This sounds like the worst possible way to raise public awareness.

In the past, advocates have performed undercover sting operations around abortion, but they are more often done by anti-abortion activists who go into abortion clinics and collect and doctoring footage to make themselves look better. It feels like it was yesterday.

To prepare for her own undercover operation, Raisner researched local crisis pregnancy centers and booked appointments. She used a small remote control to operate the button-camera and prepared questions that pregnant people typically ask about the safety of abortion. Mayday Health states in a video that medication abortion results in less extreme side effects than other drugs.

Many centers receive state and federal funding, and crisis pregnancy centers outnumbered abortion-providing clinics by a three-to-one ratio before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. They aren't bound to the same privacy standards that actual health providers must abide by. All of the same private and personal information is collected by them, with the freedom to share it as they please.

Raisner said that the staff at the clinic asked about her family and friends and took her driver's license. She said that they tried to identify other people in your life who could possibly help you raise this baby. The employees of the clinic asked her to come back after she said she was unsure if she would get an abortion.

Anti-abortion activists and even state governments that contract with anti- abortion clinics are increasingly being monitored by crisis pregnancy centers.

Several victims of crisis pregnancy centers have told the Expose Fake Clinics campaign about similar experiences, including one who said that after she left a clinic, a CPC worker would call her almost daily and tell her that she would die, or end up in hell. Some people said they had to sign contracts to not have an abortion.

Raisner said that they offered him money, baby blankets, and the idea that they would support him if he gave birth. It's just words. It is clear that the support stops after the baby is born.

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