Key Arguments for Regulation of Unregulated Pregnancy Clinics (UPCs)
Values-Based Framework
Everyone deserves access to accurate, compassionate, and confidential health care. But Unregulated Pregnancy Clinics (UPCs), also known as crisis pregnancy centers, offer limited information, counseling, and resources. They may provide basic services like pregnancy tests and limited non-diagnostic ultrasounds, but their advertising often leads people to expect more complete medical care than they deliver. These centers operate with little to no oversight, often receiving public funding while failing to meet basic medical, ethical, or financial standards.
The following section outlines the key arguments for regulating UPCs, along with talking points and sample messages:
Values Messages and Talking Points
1. Exploitation of Personal Data
Values Message: People generally assume their personal information will be kept private when they provide it to their medical provider. If you walk into a UPC, it’s not. They can share it with anti-abortion activists, law enforcement, or anyone else they choose. 261
Talking Points:
Heartbeat International, the largest UPC network, was caught recklessly exposing private health data, sharing full names, due dates, and addresses of pregnant people in an unprotected, publicly accessible video. 262
Training videos show UPC employees casually scrolling through clients’ medical records, demonstrating how easily this private information is accessed and shared.263
UPCs mislead clients into believing their private information is protected when, in reality, they can share personal data with anyone, including anti-abortion groups and law enforcement.
In Alabama, a UPC gave a woman’s records to the police, including details about her periods and contraceptive use that were used in her pregnancy-related prosecution.264
Sample Messages:
"Walk into a UPC, and your private health information could end up with anti- abortion extremists or the cops."
"Regulated clinics protect your data. UPCs can leak your name, period dates, and date of pregnancy to anyone."
2. Misuse of Public Funds and Lack of Financial Accountability
Values Message: Taxpayers deserve transparency and accountability when it comes to how their money is spent. Yet UPCs get public funds with no oversight. We must hold them accountable just like any organization using taxpayer money.”
Talking Points:
In many states, UPCs receive public funding without needing to provide impact assessments or audits.265
In 2023, Tennessee increased UPC funding from $3M to $20M; Texas allocated$140M in 2023.266
UPC financial reports often inflate impact and fund marketing and executive salaries rather than services.267
Sample Messages:
“Taxpayer dollars should fund regulated medical services people need and want, not a $1.9 billion industry that, overwhelmingly, refuses to provide evidence- based care or meet basic medical standards.”
“Taxpayers deserve to know what UPCs are doing with the tax dollars they receive. If they are providing valuable services, they should be able to prove that.”
“How can we know UPCs are the most efficient and effective way to provide services if we do not accurately know how they spend the money they receive?”
“The vast majority of UPCs take public money with zero accountability. That’s fraud, not service.
3. Deceptive Medical Practices and Misinformation
Values Message: People deserve medically accurate information to make informed decisions about their health.
Talking Points:
91% of UPCs advertise medical services, but few have full-time medical staff.268
"Abortion pill reversal," promoted by Heartbeat International,269 a major UPC network, is unproven and condemned by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) as unethical and dangerous.270
Some UPCs perform ultrasounds without proper training, leading to misdiagnoses and delays in care.271, 272
Sample Messages:
“If a hospital nurse lied to a patient, they could lose their license. But at many UPCs, untrained staff hand out medical advice that can be totally wrong—and there’s no oversight, no consequences.”
“UPCs mislead people with junk science. That’s not health care.”
4. Lack of Data Privacy and Exploitation of Sensitive Information
Values Message: Everyone deserves the right to privacy, especially when it comes to personal health data.
Talking Points:
UPCs are not bound by HIPAA, despite hundreds of UPC websites falsely claiming HIPAA compliance273
They collect sensitive information and may share it with anyone, including anti- abortion groups or law enforcement.
In Louisiana, a data breach from Heartbeat International, a leading UPC network, exposed visitors’ names, due dates, and medical histories.274
Sample Messages:
“When you visit a regulated health clinic, your data is protected. At a UPC, it can be shared with anti-abortion groups or even police.”
“UPCs exploit vulnerable people by pretending to offer confidential care–then hand over their records.
5. Coercion and Withholding of Medical Options
Values Message: Everyone deserves autonomy over their reproductive decisions.
Talking Points:
UPCs are designed to discourage abortion and provide their reproductive and sexual health services only when they feel it will help them coerce clients away from abortion.
UPC websites often inflate the rate of miscarriage in early pregnancy and suggest people seeking abortion should wait and come to the UPC for an ultrasound to determine if they will miscarry naturally.275
UPCs target people who they think might consider an abortion, delaying care until legal timeframes expire.276
Sample Messages:
“UPCs don’t offer choices. They run out the clock until your options disappear.”
“Delaying care is not health care. UPCs frequently use manipulation to deny people their rights.
6. Absence of Medical Services and Referrals
Values Message: People should be able to rely on providers for unbiased medical care and support.
Talking Points:
A study of 607 UPCs in nine states showed:
Almost two-thirds made false and biased claims about evidence-based reproductive health care.
95% did not offer prenatal care, and more than half didn’t even refer for prenatal care.
28% provided STI tests, but most did not provide treatment or referrals for care.277
Sample Messages:
“UPCs don’t offer choices. They run out the clock until your options disappear.”
“Delaying care is not health care. UPCs frequently use manipulation to deny people their rights.
7. Targeting of Marginalized Communities
Values Message: Everyone deserves health care that is accessible, equitable, and free from
manipulation.
Talking Points:
There are more than 2,600 UPCs in the U.S.,278 outnumbering abortion clinics 3-to-1, numbers that were the reverse 30 years ago.279
They advertise using abortion-related keywords to divert people searching for care.280
UPCs are often located in low-income areas and communities of color, where residents already face barriers to evidence-based reproductive health services.281,282
Sample Messages:
“UPCs routinely prey on people with the fewest options and the greatest needs.”
“Health care equity means ending deceptive practices that target the most vulnerable.”
8. Political Influence and Anti-Choice Agenda
Values Message: Public health should put patients before politics. Our laws must protect individuals’ privacy and ensure health policies reflect that priority.
Talking Points:
UPCs are active players in anti-abortion policy-making and legal efforts.283
They mobilize voters and lobby lawmakers.284
Their leaders train affiliates to influence litigation and promote abortion bans.285
Sample Messages:
“UPCs aren’t health care; they’re the boots on the ground for the anti-choice movement.”
“This industry is more focused on banning abortion than helping pregnant people.”
“Everyone deserves honest, safe, and supportive health care. It’s time to hold UPCs accountable, protect people’s privacy, and ensure public dollars go to health care providers that meet communities’ needs.”
Public Opinion Polling
UPCs are harming people all over the country. They are a little-known threat to voters, but voters reject them when they hear a little about these centers. Most voters in states want to see these unlicensed centers held accountable at all times, even before messaging. That support skyrockets when voters learn of their nefarious nature, especially their lack of health and safety standards. It stands strong even in the face of positive information about these centers.
Regulating UPCs is not a partisan matter: red state to blue state, conservative to liberal, voters are concerned about UPCs – and polling shows that voters would be more likely to re-elect lawmakers who took action against them.
This is an opportunity for policymakers to pass good policy and gain positive will among voters on both sides of the ideological aisle. Voters are more likely to consider officials trustworthy, caring about people like them, and acting in the public’s best interest if they take action on UPCs.286
