ABH Guest Post: Medical Students for Choice Board Op-Ed
Playing pretend: The Harms of Crisis Pregnancy Centers
An Op-Ed co-written by Medical Students for Choice Board Members Paige Hill, Wren Krahl, Hannah Maher, and Shreya Chanda
2025 Reproductive Freedom Day on the Hill at the Minnesota State Capitol
As medical students, we spend a significant amount of time playing pretend. Just as we’re starting to learn about health and disease, we don our white coats and participate in simulated patient interactions in order to hone our conversational skills with paid actors. As we stumble through obtaining patient histories and attempt to ask relevant questions, our limited medical training materializes. Medical educators and trained physicians are constantly evaluating our clinical readiness from these encounters. Yet down the street from campus, many individuals are performing these same actions, with far more disturbing intentions, far less medical training, and no supervision or evaluation.
Crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, are organizations designed to deter people from having abortions. Workers dress up in illegitimate white coats and offer free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, and sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing. These are not trained medical providers, and therefore are not bound by HIPAA privacy laws[1]. It was recently released that one of America’s largest Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Heartbeat International, shared participants' medical information in a training video to thousands of non-medically licensed employees and published it online for the general public, before it was later password encrypted[2]. This is a direct violation of consumer data protection laws and human rights.
While this service may be tempting due to its accessibility, it takes advantage of people who lack access to affordable healthcare resources. As we’ve learned throughout our curriculum, the foundation of informed consent is trust. This sets the expectation that all risks and benefits will be properly explained in an unbiased manner. Additionally, the American Medical Association’s ethical stance on is that without unbiased counseling and the provision of medically accurate information, CPCs should not receive public funding[3]. At CPCs, the goal is not to treat pregnant patients with respect and dignity, but to prevent abortions. Patients are led to believe they can make a choice once they learn that they are pregnant, however with the above ulterior motive, that choice has already been made for them.
CPCs attempt to garner trust by employing various strategies targeted at people who might want an abortion. CPCs locate themselves near real clinics and tend to have misleading names, in hopes that pregnant patients will choose their center instead. This location tactic is magnified here in Minnesota, where real clinics that provide abortion are heavily outnumbered by crisis pregnancy centers. Pregnant patients hoping to learn accurate medical information regarding their gestational age are given “non-diagnostic” ultrasounds from untrained technicians who are prepared to lie. Patients may be told that at their gestational age, it is “too late to get an abortion,” even if this is far from the truth. Further, even if a patient receives an STI test at a CPC, the center cannot offer treatment due to their lack of licensure. Lastly, if a patient is interested in carrying their suspected pregnancy to term, CPCs still lack the infrastructure to offer comprehensive prenatal care.
Last year, under the leadership of the state legislature’s first Reproductive Freedom Caucus, Minnesota discontinued the so-called “Positive Alternatives Grant Program,” ending state funding for CPCs that had previously been awarded millions of dollars since the program’s establishment in 2005[4]. Cutting state funding is only the first step– the majority of Crisis Pregnancy Center funding comes from private donors, so government action must be taken to assess the legality of CPCs to prevent the further exploitation of pregnant people seeking medical care. As future physicians, we urge Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison to investigate Crisis Pregnancy Centers specific to violations of data privacy in consumer protection laws and unauthorized medical care. Further, we urge patients to seek out clinics that will provide them accurate information on their pregnancy, judgment free.
As medical students, it’s a consensual activity when we put on our white coats and play pretend. Our simulated patients have been paid for their time and are invested in training us to become excellent providers. In between these encounters, we are spending countless hours studying so that we can offer treatment to patients in a way that honors their autonomy. As future providers, it is our mission to put care back into the hands of patients, by providing medically accurate information and services. No procedure is risk free, however abortion procedures carry very few, especially weighed against the risks of carrying a pregnancy to term. The role of medical providers is not to tell patients whether they should or shouldn’t get an abortion, but to empower patients with the ability to make an informed decision. Without truth, there is no choice.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/watchdog-group-asks-5-attorneys-general-investigate-crisis-pregnancy-c-rcna148188
[2] https://jessica.substack.com/p/exclusive-health-data-breach-at-americas
[3] https://policysearch.ama-assn.org/policyfinder/detail/truth?uri=%2FAMADoc%2FHOD.xml-0-3697.xml
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/28/anti-abortion-pregnancy-crisis-centers-taxpayer-money-roe
The Medical Students for Choice Board partnered with Gender Justice to write this opinion piece. Learn more about Medical Students for Choice here.