In case you missed it, a Washington Post columnist published an op-ed late last month that can only be described as a whine-weary litany of complaints about blue states’ targeting of crisis pregnancy centers (its headline, “In Massachusetts, ‘reproductive freedom’ goes only one way”)—a response to the decriminalization of abortion care later in pregnancy in the Commonwealth this summer.
It is fatuous and lazy commentary, recycling antiabortion movement talking points and a tired victim narrative about crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). It reads like straight-up CPC industry PR—something you’d find in the right-wing Washington Examiner. An embarrassment, even to Jeff Bezos’ Post. And yet: It’s notable that extremist talking points are platformed in such a mainstream outlet.
To set the record straight about the Massachusetts law: The Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act removed statutory restrictions that had limited abortion care at 24 weeks or later to specified medical circumstances. Providers and supporters of the repeal said those restrictions were so narrow and difficult to interpret that doctors and hospital attorneys feared criminal prosecution or civil liability for authorizing care, even in cases involving grave fetal diagnoses or serious threats to a patient’s health. As a result, some Massachusetts patients facing pregnancy complications had to travel to places such as Washington, D.C., Maryland or New Mexico for care.
Now, instead of being constrained by a statutory checklist, licensed physicians may use their professional judgment in consultation with their patients. That means more people who need abortion care later in pregnancy can receive it in their home state.
The Post column flippantly describes the new law as allowing women “to terminate pregnancies until birth, for any reason, so long as doing so accords with a physician’s ‘professional judgment’” (the writer’s scare quotes).
If not a trained medical professional, then who should be empowered to make this healthcare decision with a patient? An opinion columnist?
The idea that pregnancy centers are victims here is absurd.
The column’s subheadline—“Gov. Maura Healey signs a bill enabling abortion until birth”—parrots CPC network Heartbeat International’s coverage (“Healey signs bill for abortions up to birth”), as well as its cavalier disregard for the experiences of Massachusetts women who needed care under the 24-week restrictions: “Abortions after that point are permitted only when the mother’s life or health is threatened (which could mean anything),” the writer warns.
Pivoting to the CPCs-as-victims part of its narrative, the column treats Healey’s celebration of the law like a gotcha, claiming Healey lauds the law as a “triumph for choice” while sponsoring a public education campaign that “smeared the dozens of organizations that support vulnerable mothers seeking alternatives.”
According to the WaPo columnist, the campaign—to educate people in Massachusetts about how to recognize CPCs and where they can access unbiased, full-spectrum reproductive care—is an attack on pregnancy centers because it warns about their delay tactics, medical disinformation and lack of comprehensive care. She dismisses these extensively documented CPC practices as “generalizations” offered on the state website “with little evidence.”
The writer then cherry-picks facts about CPC-related litigation in Massachusetts, downplaying serious allegations of misconduct and the involvement of the broader antiabortion movement. She makes only passing reference to a federal district court’s dismissal of a CPC’s constitutional challenge to the public education campaign—emphasizing that the ruling the CPC has appealed. She also omits a pending case in which an abortion clinic alleges that the CPC next door improperly accessed its electronic scheduling platforms and diverted unsuspecting patients.
She also minimizes an alarming case against a Worcester CPC that allegedly misdiagnosed a young woman’s ectopic pregnancy, emphasizing that the center settled without admitting liability. The lawsuit alleged that CPC staff told a young woman that an ultrasound showed a healthy pregnancy; weeks later, her ectopic pregnancy ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding and requiring emergency surgery.
The columnist concludes: “But cases of medical malpractice aren’t reason to mistrust all hospitals.”
(A careful reader will notice the columnist links to reporting that undercuts her argument: An NBC News story finding that CPCs advertise ultrasounds as a way to identify ectopic pregnancies even as a national CPC organization warned affiliates that suspected ectopic pregnancies pose an acute medical and legal risk to their centers.)
Finally, the columnist dredges up a 4-year-old case of spray paint vandalism at a Massachusetts CPC as proof that “helping mothers is threatening” to CPC opponents.
The idea that pregnancy centers are victims here is absurd.
CPCs are part of an industry that reported over $2 billion in revenue in 2024 and is projected to reach $2.6 billion in 2026.
State legislatures have committed more than $200 million to the industry for fiscal year 2026–27 alone (according to Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch)—despite documented cases and allegations involving fraud, overbilling and misuse of taxpayer dollars, as well as a gaping discrepancy between the industry’s reported expenses and its own valuation of the services it provides.
Reporting from Baptist News Global found that “ballooning” state funding of CPCs “has been awarded with little or no oversight, resulting in a cascade of waste and abuse documented by reporters… It’s not clear what those taxpayer funds have yielded because states have been lax in oversight and reporting. Funds are awarded, but few questions are asked.”
This is a largely unregulated industry that advertises medical care—recent JAMA Internal Medicine study found 91 percent of CPC websites nationwide advertised medical services and 77 percent advertised ultrasound—yet many CPCs operate outside the health, safety and licensing standards that govern medical offices.
Indeed, thousands of CPCs—including most in Massachusetts—advertise medical services without publicly demonstrating baseline medical oversight. But in state legislatures across the country this session, CPCs and their allies opposed common-sense proposals that would protect patient privacy, require facilities offering medical services to be licensed, and establish credentialing standards for staff performing transvaginal ultrasounds.
Meantime, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the group behind the Dobbs ruling that eliminated the constitutional right to non-medically indicated abortion care is promoting a model bill to exempt CPCs from state or federal regulation; versions have already passed in multiple states.
The industry is also enjoying robust support from the Trump administration, which launched a federal website that directs people seeking pregnancy care to CPCs alongside federally qualified health centers. The administration has also changed Title X funding priorities in ways that could allow CPCs to compete for federal grants.
This industry also enjoys extraordinary protection from well-resourced legal groups that sue to block efforts to investigate CPC activities and impact, regulate their medical practices or educate consumers, as the Massachusetts campaign was designed to do.
In the past 10 years alone, conservative legal groups—Alliance Defending Freedom, Thomas More Society, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, First Liberty Institute and others—have brought more than 30 lawsuits challenging state efforts to increase CPC transparency and accountability.
In fact, a CPC case that recently made it to the Supreme Court reveals that there is a massive legal and public relations machine backing the industry that this columnist would have readers believe is a hapless victim of hostile blue state actors.
In that case, First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport (formerly First Choice v. Platkin), Alliance Defending Freedom represented a New Jersey CPC network seeking to block a state attorney general’s subpoena. After losing in the lower courts, ADF appealed to the Supreme Court, and dozens of organizations and individuals flooded the Court with amicus briefs.
Amici in support of the New Jersey CPC included conservative and libertarian policy and advocacy groups; free speech and religious liberty groups; Catholic, Mormon, Anglican, evangelical, Lutheran and Southern Baptist congregations; professional religious groups; national CPC organizations; individual CPCs, coalitions and donors; national and state antiabortion organizations; conservative women’s groups; and Second Amendment advocacy groups. Republican officials from 20 states and 32 Republican members of Congress also filed briefs in support of First Choice. And antiabortion movement leaders published an array of op-eds in both mainstream and right-wing media, echoing arguments made in the briefs.
When all was said and done, the court ruled in favor of the First Choice CPC, allowing it to press its legal challenge to the state investigation in friendlier federal court.
Hardly the profile of a victim. Rather, it’s the profile of an industry that gets special treatment, special exemptions, special privileges and extraordinary legal protections.
Massachusetts, the target of the columnist’s complaint, actually offers a striking example of how “big guns” are protecting this industry. Your Options Medical, the pregnancy center suing the governor, the Department of Public Health commissioner and Reproductive Equity Now over the public education campaign, did not bring that lawsuit on its own. It is represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative Christian legal group with an international network of affiliates. The European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights identifies the ACLJ network as one of the leading U.S.-based funders of anti-gender activism in Europe. Here in the U.S., ACLJ was a member of Project 2025’s advisory board.
The American Center for Law and Justice is not only behind the case challenging the Massachusetts public education campaign; it is also bankrolling a slick public relations “counter-campaign” promoting CPCs in Massachusetts through print, television and digital advertising.
Arguing Massachusetts pregnancy centers are victims of the Healey administration is pure gaslighting. The only victims in this landscape are the women and youth needing pregnancy care who are targeted by CPCs.
In the wake of Massachusetts’ repeal of its gestational limit, feminist journalist Jessica Valenti observed, “Republicans think they’ve found the message that will take them through the midterms and into 2028: Massachusetts.” Valenti cites an Aug. 18 memo to GOP candidates from the CEO of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America urging that “Democrats’ extremism on late-term abortion” is “the winning abortion message for Republicans in the midterms.”
Evidently this Post columnist got the memo.
Massachusetts is now the 10th state to allow abortion later in pregnancy based on a physician’s professional judgment. The change should spare more patients and families the added trauma, delay and expense of traveling out of state for care. It also puts the decision in the hands of all pregnant patients and their doctors—including those whose timely access to care has been obstructed by crisis pregnancy centers, which use delay tactics with women they believe to be “abortion-minded” as part of their business model.
No longer, under the new Massachusetts law, does a hospital lawyer, politician or anyone else get to decide whether a patient “deserves” to access this care.
No wonder CPC industry spokespeople are so threatened by it.
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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need.
Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. What’s your reproductive freedom story? Add your voice. Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
Look to these trusted groups if you or a loved one needs to know more about reliable abortion care:
- A one-stop-shop for abortion seekers: I Need An A
- Other websites to explore all your options for abortion care: Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder
- Safe websites to buy abortion medication: Aid Access, Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, Hey Jane
- If you need help affording abortion care, tell your telemedicine provider or contact an abortion fund near you.
- To protect your digital privacy when planning your abortion, click here.
- For free legal help as a patient or doctor, call If/When/How’s Repro Helpline—844-868-2812—or contact Pregnancy Justice.
- For medical advice, contact the Miscarriage & Abortion Hotline: 833-246-2632.
- If you need to know the abortion law in your state, look to the Center for Reproductive Rights. or Guttmacher Institute.
