• Posted June 5, 2025

Crisis Pregnancy Centers Draw Fair Share of Younger Women, Study Says

As many as 1 in 5 women say they’ve sought care at fake medical clinics with an anti-abortion agenda, a new study says.

Between 12% to 20% of 18- to 44-year-old women in four states – Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Jersey – say they’ve sought care at a pregnancy crisis center, according to report published June 4 in the journal PLOS One.

“Crisis pregnancy centers are unlicensed facilities that often pose as medical clinics to target pregnant people,” wrote the research team led by Maria Gallo, chair of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The centers “typically hold missions of preventing abortion, opposing contraception and promoting abstinence outside of marriage,” the team wrote.

More than 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers were operating in the U.S. in 2018, three times the number of abortion facilities, researchers said in background notes.

Both the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and the North American Society for Pediatric Gynecology have warned that the centers risk patients’ health by failing to comply with sexual and reproductive health standards, researchers wrote.

“Because the centers do not have to follow medical and safety standards, people should not turn to them for medical care,” they said in a journal news release.

For the study, researchers analyzed survey data on nearly 9,000 women who’d either been pregnant or had a pregnancy test. They were asked whether they had ever gone to a pregnancy crisis center.

“We found that attending a CPC in each of the states was not rare,” researchers said.

More than 20% of Arizona women surveyed said they’d sought care at a crisis pregnancy center, along with 14% of women in Wisconsin and Iowa. About 12% of women in New Jersey had visited one of the centers.

“CPCs pose a public health risk by providing misleading, manipulative or inaccurate health information,” the study said.

For example, center websites falsely claim that abortion has been linked to breast cancer, poor mental health and infertility, researchers said.

“Given these findings, providers should be aware that their pregnant patients might have previously attended a CPC and might have been exposed to misinformation that needs to be corrected,” researchers added in the news release.

More information 

Planned Parenthood has more about crisis pregnancy centers.

SOURCES: PLOS, news release, June 4, 2025; PLOS One, June 4, 2025