{"id":614131,"date":"2026-04-29T23:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/614131\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T23:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:12:09","slug":"an-international-human-rights-approach-to-unregulated-pregnancy-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/614131\/","title":{"rendered":"An International Human Rights Approach to Unregulated Pregnancy Centers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine arriving at a clinic for a common medical procedure listed on the clinic\u2019s website, only to learn that the clinic neither provides it nor refers to providers who do. Instead, the staff attempts to dissuade you from obtaining the procedure using moral arguments and scientifically inaccurate information. While disconcerting, this scenario plays out regularly in the thousands of unregulated pregnancy clinics<\/a> (UPCs) (often referred to as crisis pregnancy centers) across the United States, as well as in other countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

UPCs are nonprofit clinics, often religiously affiliated, that offer services like free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds with the intent of diverting and dissuading individuals from seeking abortion. UPCs have been criticized for falsely advertising themselves as full-service reproductive health clinics (e.g., depicting staff wearing stethoscopes or scrubs on their websites, or by claiming to provide \u201cOptions Counseling<\/a>\u201d), despite not providing services like abortion or abortion referrals, contraception, miscarriage management, or treatment for ectopic pregnancy. As UPCs are not staffed by medical providers and do not offer medical services (despite what their advertising may suggest), UPCs and their staff are not subject to<\/a> regulatory oversight or federal privacy protections. Medical experts have warned<\/a> that UPCs endanger health by delaying or preventing abortion care and promoting unproven and potentially dangerous treatments, such as abortion \u201creversal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite posing clear public health threats, UPCs are subject to relatively few transparency, oversight, and accountability mechanisms in the United States. Today\u2019s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in First Choice Women\u2019s Resource Centers v. Davenport<\/a> provides yet another example of how UPCs wield First Amendment arguments to resist state regulation. Against this backdrop, international human rights law offers a useful framework for preventing private entities, like UPCs, from interfering with pregnant people\u2019s ability to access abortion care, in addition to information about such care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The U.S. Context<\/p>\n

U.S. states have attempted to fill regulatory gaps around UPCs but have faced numerous challenges. In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a California law<\/a> requiring UPCs to disclose to patients whether they were unlicensed medical facilities, ruling that it violated First Amendment free speech protections. In the wake of that decision, states have sought to regulate UPCs<\/a> through their public health powers, including by enforcing consumer protection laws<\/a>, consumer privacy statutes, and medical licensing laws.<\/p>\n

Yet, many of these tactics for responding to UPCs\u2019 fraudulent and deceptive practices are also under threat. Today, the Supreme Court issued a decision<\/a> that could make it more difficult for state governments to investigate UPCs under consumer protection laws. The case arose when a UPC in New Jersey sued to block the state\u2019s attorney general from investigating it, arguing that the attorney general\u2019s subpoena \u2014 which requested donor information \u2014 violated the UPC\u2019s First Amendment right to free association. Siding with the UPC, the Court held that the UPC has standing to challenge the subpoena in federal court. Relatedly, in December 2025, a U.S. appeals court blocked the New York attorney general\u2019s attempt to prevent UPCs from promoting abortion \u201creversal,\u201d an unproven and potentially harmful \u201ctreatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some states have sought ways to better regulate UPCs, while others have moved in the opposite direction<\/a>. States \u2014 including Kansas, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Wyoming \u2014 have introduced or passed legislation to shield UPCs from regulatory measures, and entitle them to damages when the law is violated<\/a>. Equally alarming, the number of UPCs has dramatically increased since the Dobbs decision in 2022, as has taxpayer funding. In 2018, there were 2,500 UPCs<\/a> in the United States (three times the number of abortion clinics). By 2024, this number had risen to 2,633<\/a>. Between 2022 and 2023, state appropriations to UPCs increased <\/a>by 78% from $184 million to $329 million. As a result, UPCs are taking in nearly $2 billion<\/a> in annual revenue.<\/p>\n

International Human Rights Law<\/p>\n

UPCs may have originated<\/a> in the United States, but they have since spread to countries all over the world. Other countries have begun exploring and adopting a range of mechanisms to counter UPCs\u2019 deceptive practices, even before international human rights bodies directly examined their impact and reflected on State obligations related to their regulation. <\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s Choice on the Termination of Pregnancy Act<\/a> (CTOPA) of 1996, for example, penalizes any person found to \u201cpreven[t] the lawful termination of a pregnancy<\/a> or obstruc[t] access to a facility for the termination of a pregnancy.\u201d The Canadian government\u2019s abortion website (Abortion in Canada<\/a>), alternatively, warns that: \u201cCrisis pregnancy centres are usually run by anti-abortion organizations. They often look like clinics or support centres, but they are designed to discourage people from getting an abortion.\u201d In 2024, the government also considered legislation<\/a> to amend the Income Tax Act to require registered charities (which receive tax benefits under the law) to explicitly disclose if they do not provide abortions, birth control, or referrals to such services as part of \u201cabortion counselling.\u201d<\/p>\n

While its oversight bodies have yet to directly address UPCs, international human rights law offers a useful framework for examining and countering their deceptive tactics. The rights to health, information, and the benefit of scientific progress, among others, provide a compelling basis for increasing oversight and regulation of UPCs around the world.<\/p>\n

The right to health includes the right to sexual and reproductive health. Human rights bodies have explained that this right encompasses both entitlements and freedoms, including the rights to \u201ccontrol one\u2019s health and body<\/a>\u201d and make decisions free of coercion \u201cregarding matters concerning one\u2019s body and sexual and reproductive health<\/a>.\u201d Under the right to health\u2019s AAAQ framework<\/a>, States are to ensure that access to sexual and reproductive health services is available, accessible, acceptable, and of high quality. Under international human rights law, States are also obligated to protect the right to health \u2014 namely by preventing third parties from interfering with individuals\u2019 full realization of that right. As a result, States have an obligation to ensure that UPCs do not undermine individuals\u2019 ability to access abortion care, which would constitute an infringement upon the right to sexual and reproductive health.<\/p>\n

The right to information is a central part of both the right to health and the right to the freedom of expression. The accessibility element of the right to health previously referenced explicitly encompasses \u201cinformation accessibility.\u201d In the context of reproductive health, the World Health Organization (WHO) provides that the right to information requires States to make \u201caccurate, evidence-based abortion information available to individuals on a confidential basis.\u201d<\/a> At least one human rights body, moreover, has characterized the failure to provide a 13-year-old pregnant girl in Peru with information on abortion care as a violation of her right to freedom of expression<\/a>. By failing to inform people seeking abortions of their options, UPCs are intentionally withholding information contrary to this right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, the right to benefit from scientific progress ensures access to medical advancements and protects against the spread of medical misinformation. One UN Special Rapporteur<\/a> has stressed that women are \u201cparticularly targeted by pseudoscience put forward by those who want to maintain control over them,\u201d specifically referencing attempts to restrict access to medication abortion. Accordingly, States are required to protect people from the \u201charmful consequences of false, misleading and pseudoscience-based practices<\/a>.\u201d Much of the information provided to abortion seekers by UPCs arguably qualifies as such, meaning that a State is obligated \u2014 under international human rights law \u2014 to protect individuals from their deceptive tactics.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers and advocates in the United States face various challenges in effectively regulating UPCs. Following today\u2019s Supreme Court decision, looking not only to the recent experiences of other countries but also to long-standing international human rights standards has the potential to unearth approaches to regulating UPCs\u2019 deceptive practices and mitigating their harm to pregnant people throughout the country.<\/p>\n

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the O\u2019Neill Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine arriving at a clinic for a common medical procedure listed on the clinic\u2019s website, only to learn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-614131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}