New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Heartbeat International and 11 other CPCs in the state for deceiving abortion seekers and pushing unsafe, untested “abortion pill reversal” junk science.Moji Alawode-El was in her early 20s and knew she wanted to have an abortion after she found out she was unexpectedly pregnant in 2003. “I was poor, I was pregnant, I didn’t want to be,” she told Jezebel recently.
Alawode-El asked for abortion pills to end her pregnancy. The CPC didn’t provide abortions, but of course they didn’t tell her that. “They said, ‘We’re out of stock right now, but call us next week.’” She did, and was told they were still out-of-stock and to call again next week. A week passed; she called again. They were still “out of stock.” Three weeks passed—three weeks Alawode-El was forced to remain pregnant when she didn’t want to be, three weeks waiting for something that wasn’t coming.
In a statement shared with Jezebel, James’ office said Heartbeat International and the other defendants in the suit “are spreading dangerous misinformation by advertising ‘abortion reversals’ without any medical and scientific proof,” and accused the groups of “ a scientifically unproven and potentially life-threatening intervention” on consumers. “Abortions cannot be reversed. Any treatments that claim to do so are made without scientific evidence and could be unsafe,” James said.
“It’s part of an overarching effort to discredit the medical community, discredit reproductive rights actors and medically established information about pregnancy and abortion,” she explained. “Abortion pill reversal” misinformation also amounts to another “delay tactic,” Shakouri said. The goal of CPCs is to “stop people from finalizing a decision about abortion that, in most cases, they’ve already made for themselves, and if they’re confused, they might delay further.
At CPCs, Raisner said, “They offer free ultrasounds, financial assistance, all the resources necessary, and make it very tempting to lean on them. Unfortunately, we know they’re fake medical clinics whose only agenda is to spread lies, to shame people away from abortion.” At all of the CPCs Raisner visited, she told Jezebel that it was as if all employees were reading from the same pre-written “script,” with varying anecdotes subbed in.