The anti-abortion "social safety net"

How can "crisis pregnancy centers" replace abortion clinics? In the wake of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices [striking down Roe v. Wade](, there has been a lot of focus — rightly so — on how trigger laws have or will snap away abortion rights in several states. But there’s another side to this monumental decision that comes with a question: What will stay and take Roe's place? [The troubling answer, according to researchers and reproductive health advocates, is pregnancy resource centers](. I first learned about these places in high school (in very conservative Orange County, California). They were clinics that seemed from the outside to be offering abortions, but they didn't actually provide them. At these clinics, they would try to talk you out of getting an abortion. Current centers have been [criticized]( for giving out misleading or false information about abortion and reproductive health. As my colleague Anna North reports, what worries reproductive health advocates is that the dissolution of Roe v. Wade will make pregnancy resource centers more powerful, better-funded, and the de facto option in states that ban abortion. Conservative and right-wing allies say these centers will be able to provide a safety net for people with unplanned pregnancies. But since these centers often operate with a lack of client privacy and have histories of spreading health misinformation, that “safety net” feels like an empty promise. —[Alex Abad-Santos](, senior correspondent   The anti-abortion "social safety net" [anti-abortion activists celebrating in DC]( Matt McClain/Washington Post for Getty Images When the last abortion clinic in Texas closes its doors for good, Prestonwood Pregnancy Center will remain. So will Agape, with locations in Round Rock, Austin, Cedar Park, and Taylor. So will the Pregnancy Help Center, operating in Texas’s Brazoria County since 1990. These are pregnancy resource centers, also known as crisis pregnancy centers, and for many years, their main mission has been to convince people not to have abortions (the three centers above did not respond to Vox’s request for comment). But now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion bans are either in effect or imminent in Texas and more than 20 other states around the country. In the coming months and years, pregnancy resource centers will have a bigger role to play — one that has researchers and reproductive justice advocates worried. While many centers offer supplies like baby clothes and diapers, they’ve also been criticized for misleading pregnant people and spreading false claims about the dangers of abortion. In one congressional investigation, 87 percent of centers gave false or misleading medical information. Some centers have also been found to encourage people to delay an abortion decision until they are past the gestational limit, sometimes by misrepresenting state laws; one Texas woman even says she was told she could continue carrying an ectopic pregnancy — which are highly dangerous and almost never viable — if she was “careful.” [“It’s dangerous because they position themselves as legitimate health care centers,” said Onyenma Obiekea, policy analyst for the Black Women for Wellness Action Project, a reproductive justice advocacy group.]( “You earn the trust of community members only to offer this disinformation.” As anti-abortion advocates and lawmakers plan for a post-Roe future, they’re increasingly talking about services people will need to get through unplanned pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting: things like diapers, formula, and help with food and rent. For a lot of conservatives, the go-to solution for providing those resources is pregnancy centers. In Texas and at least eight other states, the centers already get government funding, and experts expect that funding to grow as the facilities move into providing more kinds of services, like adoption. The centers are part of a kind of parallel social safety net, created by anti-abortion groups and suffused with anti-abortion values, that’s likely to get larger and stronger in the years to come. [Read the full story »]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   The nontoxic social media app that tells you your toxic traits Personality tests are mostly bogus. Dimensional is fun anyway. [Read the full story »](   NFTS and the monetization of hope Everything feels broken. Who can blame people for wanting NFTs to be a fix? 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