Across the U.S., more than 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) provide free services and counseling for women struggling with unplanned pregnancies. They outnumber abortion clinics 3 to 1 nationwide, and as some states shutter clinics after Roe’s reversal, that ratio will grow.
But when two NBC News producers visited state-funded CPCs in Texas to ask for counseling, counselors told them that abortions caused mental illness and implied abortions could also cause cancer and infertility. The producers did not tell the CPCs they were with NBC News.
The nation’s largest national obstetricians’ group, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says the claims are medical misinformation.
The centers, which are often faith-based, frequently get funding from religious groups and individual donors, but many also depend partly on taxpayer dollars. CPCs have long been accused of providing what experts have called “misleading or false” information to discourage women from getting abortions, as NBC News witnessed firsthand after sending two producers to CPCs in Texas to request pregnancy counseling.
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