Sarah Varney, special health care correspondent for the PBS News Hour, has been providing pro-abortion reporting ever since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, focusing predominantly on lost opportunities to abort nationwide. In Monday’s program she once again went after the pro-life movement under the online headline “Rise of crisis pregnancy centers highlights shift in anti-abortion movement.”
Geoff Bennett: Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving a group of faith-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey. The organization is hoping to block the state's attorney general from investigating whether they misled women into believing the centers offered abortions. The case highlights an effort to crack down on these so-called crisis pregnancy centers. For our series The Next Frontier, special correspondent Sarah Varney reports, these organizations are a growing part of the anti-abortion movement in a post-Roe America.
“So-called pregnancy centers”? Varney found a sympathetic young victim of one such center.
Hana Miller, Minnesota Native: And I was terrified. I mean, like, no 18-year-old wants to find themselves in that position.
Sarah Varney: Four years ago, Hana Miller, then a freshman at Brandeis University outside of Boston, became pregnant. After searching for abortion care on the Internet, the Minnesota native called one of the first clinics to pop up….But partway through the appointment, Hana realized she had come to the wrong place. Instead of an abortion clinic, Hana was sitting in a crisis pregnancy center. Known as CPCs, these mostly faith-based nonprofits offer resources to pregnant women to steer them away from abortion. But reproductive rights advocates in the medical community have criticized CPCs for using deceptive and at times unsafe practices.
Are abortion mills “safe” for every human who enters them?
Varney: These centers are part of a larger strategy, says Carrie Baker, in the next frontier of the anti-abortion movement.
Carrie Baker, Smith College: When people think of the anti-abortion movement, they think of the push to try to make abortion illegal. And they haven't focused as much on the ground game, which is what CPCs are.
Varney spoke of the narrowing chances to abort a baby as a tragedy, even though the crisis pregnancy centers she describes don’t sound very awful.
Varney: As of last year, there were more than 2,600 crisis pregnancy centers and only 765 abortion clinics in communities across the U.S. Many of these centers, which typically provide free diapers, pregnancy tests and anti-abortion counseling, offer health care services and medical advice without a license.
Carrie Baker: As these clinics get more and more things like ultrasounds and appear more and more medical and encourage people to rely on what they're saying, they're more of a danger. I wouldn't call them medical providers. I would call them political organizations who are often not revealing their political agenda, at least initially.
Not revealing an agenda? None of Varney's experts are identified as liberal, leftist, radical, feminist, or progressive. There was only "reproductive rights advocates." Not "abortion advocates." There were ten uses of "anti-abortion" in the story by reporters and experts. No "pro-abortion."
Baker's so radical a feminist that she co-chairs the Ms. magazine "Committee of Scholars." Varney made no pushback against the professor's paranoia.
Varney: Baker points to cases where patients were misdiagnosed, delaying needed medical care, or were misled about the safety of abortion….
The irony of the phrase “safety of abortion” apparently didn’t raise an eyebrow during News Hour production meetings. At least Varney spoke with a pro-life person.
Brian Westbrook, Executive Director and Founder, Coalition Life: We stand here today because Planned Parenthood and their allies want to destroy life and not protect it.
….
Varney: Brian Westbrook is executive director of Coalition Life. The anti-abortion group runs a crisis pregnancy center in the St. Louis suburbs. They send out protesters for so-called sidewalk counseling to abortion clinics in and out of the state.
Yes, another “so-called” descriptor, casting doubt on the sincerity of the pro-lifers.
The story didn’t even mention the word “baby,” but Varney did bring up the dubious phrase “abortion care” twice.
Two weeks ago, Varney glamorized an "underground network" of abortion pill distributors in pro-life states on the News Hour, and in 2023 provided some free publicity (on then-publicly funded television) for abortion pill-makers.
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS News Hour
12/1/25
7:35:28 p.m. (ET)
Geoff Bennett: Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving a group of faith-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey. The organization is hoping to block the state's attorney general from investigating whether they misled women into believing the centers offered abortions.
The case highlights an effort to crack down on these so-called crisis pregnancy centers.
For our series The Next Frontier, special correspondent Sarah Varney reports, these organizations are a growing part of the anti-abortion movement in a post-Roe America.
Hana Miller, Minnesota Native: And I was terrified. I mean, like, no 18-year-old wants to find themselves in that position.
Sarah Varney: Four years ago, Hana Miller, then a freshman at Brandeis University outside of Boston, became pregnant. After searching for abortion care on the Internet, the Minnesota native called one of the first clinics to pop up.
Hana Miller:They were really trying to, like, beat around the bush, really trying to just get me there.
Sarah Varney: What happens when you went inside?
Hana Miller: It looked exactly like any doctor's office, down to a woman in scrubs.
Woman: Hello.
Sarah Varney: But partway through the appointment, Hana realized she had come to the wrong place. Instead of an abortion clinic, Hana was sitting in a crisis pregnancy center.
Known as CPCs, these mostly faith-based nonprofits offer resources to pregnant women to steer them away from abortion. But reproductive rights advocates in the medical community have criticized CPCs for using deceptive and at times unsafe practices.
Hana Miller: They told me that I was eight weeks pregnant at a time when I was six weeks pregnant.
Sarah Varney: Did anything she said change your mind?
Hana Miller: No. It made me kind of more resolved in my decision. But it changed fundamentally the way that I felt about it. It felt like something I needed to be ashamed of.
Sarah Varney: These centers are part of a larger strategy, says Carrie Baker, in the next frontier of the anti-abortion movement.
Carrie Baker, Smith College: When people think of the anti-abortion movement, they think of the push to try to make abortion illegal. And they haven't focused as much on the ground game, which is what CPCs are.
Sarah Varney: Baker teaches gender, law and public policy at Smith College. She says after many abortion clinics were forced to close post-Roe, the conservative Christian movement has prioritized replacing them.
Man: Don't murder an innocent child.
Sarah Varney: As of last year, there were more than 2,600 crisis pregnancy centers and only 765 abortion clinics in communities across the U.S.
Many of these centers, which typically provide free diapers, pregnancy tests and anti-abortion counseling, offer health care services and medical advice without a license.
Carrie Baker: As these clinics get more and more things like ultrasounds and appear more and more medical and encourage people to rely on what they're saying, they're more of a danger. I wouldn't call them medical providers. I would call them political organizations who are often not revealing their political agenda, at least initially.
Sarah Varney: Baker points to cases where patients were misdiagnosed, delaying needed medical care, or were misled about the safety of abortion. And because nearly all of the centers are not licensed medical clinics, and, because of that, not subject to federal health care privacy laws, critics worry about what they are doing with patient information.
Carrie Baker: There's a fair amount of evidence that anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers are collecting information about people, and they're creating a mass database of young pregnant women or people that may not yet be pregnant, but might become pregnant.
My concern about CPCs is that they are actually surveilling women for criminal prosecution.
Sarah Varney: This year, the crisis pregnancy center industry is expected to bring in more than $2.5 billion. From 2017 to 2023, nearly $430 million in federal dollars were awarded to more than 650 CPCs across the country through teen pregnancy prevention, welfare, and other federal programs.
And though a majority of funding for CPCs is from churches and private donors, an increasing amount is coming from state taxpayer dollars.
Brian Westbrook, Executive Director and Founder, Coalition Life: We stand here today because Planned Parenthood and their allies want to destroy life and not protect it.
Sarah Varney: At the center of the abortion fight today, Missouri is home to more than 90 CPCs.
Brian Westbrook: We want them to be the best darn mom they possibly can be, and that's where we come in.
Sarah Varney: Brian Westbrook is executive director of Coalition Life. The anti-abortion group runs a crisis pregnancy center in the St. Louis suburbs. They send out protesters for so-called sidewalk counseling to abortion clinics in and out of the state.
Brian Westbrook: We never believed that any mother wakes up in the morning saying, yes, I really want an abortion. I don't think anyone ever wakes up thinking they're excited to do that. And so what we want to do is we want to coach them. Then they can kind of pause, think about it, make a logical decision of, yes, maybe I shouldn't go through with this abortion.
Sarah Varney: Westbrook says they served around 1,100 women last year and on average helped four to five people per day.
Brian Westbrook: Our goal is to create a family unit that the child would be in a good spot to go into, to be born into.
Sarah Varney: The center offers pregnancy and STI testing, ultrasounds and pregnancy coaching. Westbrook says that work is made possible because of private donors. In Missouri, residents receive a 70 percent tax credit when they donate to groups like Coalition Life. Last year, the state approved $11 million in these tax credits.
That's on top of the state's long-running Alternatives to Abortion program, which received more than $8 million in 2024.
Brian Westbrook: It certainly does help. It helps our donors for sure. They become a little bit more generous. But I try to stay away from government funding as much as we possibly can. For some pregnancy centers, that's fantastic for them. For us, we want to be able to operate as independently as humanly possible. And we know that a lot of government funding comes with a lot of strings.
Sarah Varney: Missouri is not alone. From 2021 to 2024, anti-abortion centers in at least 21 states received funding through grants, state programs, budget allocations or tax credits.
Carrie Baker says, even in states where abortion is legal, crisis pregnancy centers are hard to hold accountable.
Carrie Baker: Just like a church can say whatever it wants on a Sunday morning, they're like, we're like a church. We can say whatever we want. We don't charge for our services, so we can't be regulated. We don't have to reveal any information.
Sarah Varney: But that may be changing in Massachusetts. Last year, a CPC in Worcester settled a lawsuit that alleged a nurse failed to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy. That's when a fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus, a condition that is dangerous if left untreated. The woman survived, but needed emergency surgery for massive internal bleeding.
Narrator: Whether you need pregnancy care or abortion care, avoid anti-abortion centers.
Sarah Varney: That summer, Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, launched a $1 million education campaign to discourage residents from going to CPCs.
State Sen. Becca Rausch (D-MA): In order to get at anti-abortion centers, at this very real problem and threat to the health and safety of a lot of people, we have to do it in a way that does not run afoul of the First Amendment. That's hard to do.
Sarah Varney: Democratic State Senator Becca Rausch authored a bill requiring a licensed health care professional to supervise any ultrasound related to a pregnancy. It was signed into law last year.
State Sen. Becca Rausch: Because of search engines and algorithms and money, a lot of times, the first places that pop up are these anti-abortion centers. But if they can't provide any ultrasound services because it's illegal in Massachusetts for them to do so because they lack a license and the appropriate training to do so safely and accurately, then that doesn't happen at the get-go.
Sarah Varney: But some groups are pushing back.
Your Options Medical, which runs centers in Eastern Massachusetts, is suing the state, saying its education campaign violates the group's free speech and equal protection rights.
Hana Miller: This experience, for all intents and purposes, it did not have the effect that they wanted it to in so many ways.
Sarah Varney: Weeks after her CPC appointment, Hana was able to get abortion care at a licensed clinic near Boston. She says the ordeal inspired her to study reproductive health and policy.
Hana Miller: Class of 2025, we made it.
Sarah Varney: This may, she graduated with a degree in public health.
Hana Miller: I felt incredible shame, incredible guilt. I was so embarrassed. And I felt stupid. Like, how could I not have seen this sooner? And I have thought about this for a long time, and I have kind of come out saying, you should not feel that. They should feel that.
Sarah Varney: Hana hopes talking about her experience will help others avoid the same pain in the future.
For "PBS News Hour," I'm Sarah Varney in Massachusetts.
