Above photo: A public service message from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is viewed warning people to avoid anti-abortion centers, on July 11, 2024, in Boston. Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP.
New Jersey has almost twice as many anti-abortion centers as it does actual abortion clinics.
Often backed by religious ministries, they resemble health clinics and target low-income people, immigrants, and communities of color.
Pilgrim Medical Center is a small, privately-owned abortion clinic in downtown Montclair, New Jersey, offering abortions conducted by licensed and board-certified medical professionals.
Just three blocks down the street stands First Choice Women’s Resource Center. Its website promises “compassionate care” with cost-free services, and answers questions about abortions: How late can the abortion pill be taken? How much does an abortion cost? When is the latest I can get an abortion?
“If you think you could be pregnant, please come in for a pregnancy test and to receive information about your options,” the website encourages. But First Choice does not actually provide abortion services or referrals to abortion providers.
First Choice is one of more than 50 anti-abortion centers in New Jersey, commonly known as crisis pregnancy centers. These centers amount to nearly double the number of in-person abortion clinics across the state. Reproductive rights groups have documented more than 120 anti-abortion centers in neighboring New York, with nearly three dozen in the New York City area alone.
Anti-abortion centers appear to be reproductive health clinics, often with waiting rooms resembling real medical clinics, but are often religious ministries that do not perform abortions and are not licensed by the New Jersey Department of Health. The website of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents First Choice, says its five locations across New Jersey have served 36,000 women in its 40-year history.
Claudia Lopez, the assistant administrator at Pilgrim, says she often sees anti-abortion centers’ teams standing outside Pilgrim’s office promising free ultrasounds, confusing patients to think the two are the same organization.
“There’s a lot of misinformation coming from them,” Lopez says, adding that these centers will often target people with limited English. “The communication barrier can limit how much they’re understanding the whole process.”
In the most dangerous of circumstances, anti-abortion centers will encourage patients to come back weeks after their ultrasound, Lopez says. But by then, the patient has passed the 24.6 weeks of pregnancy up to which Pilgrim provides abortions.
Ashley Underwood is the director of the reproductive health watchdog organization Equity Forward, which has investigated anti-abortion centers and advocated for increased government oversight. She says these centers often use deceptive practices to target young people, low-income communities, communities of color and immigrants.
“You’ll also notice that in their advertisements, they tend to use people of color,” Underwood says. Anti-abortion centers Gateway Pregnancy Center and First Choice Women’s Resource Center, which have several locations in New Jersey, have websites using images of people of color and materials translated into Spanish.
In recent years, several New Jersey lawmakers have attempted to regulate these centers and curb their disproportionate impact on women of color through state and federal bills.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a consumer alert on anti-abortion centers in 2022, highlighting some of their dangerous practices. The alert advises that “many CPCs are not licensed medical facilities and do not employ licensed medical professionals, [meaning] CPC staff likely are not required to keep your health information private or follow medical ethics rules and standards of care.” It also urges people that some CPCs offer non-diagnostic ultrasounds, which can be performed by unlicensed workers and may provide misleading results.
New Jersey is one of several states, including California, Colorado, and Illinois, that have tried to take legal action to regulate anti-abortion centers but were met with strong pushback.
“As more and more actions are being taken against these entities, we’re seeing them team up with the support of anti-abortion law firms and anti-abortion donors to challenge [litigation], even in blue states,” Underwood says.
In 2023, Attorney General Platkin issued a subpoena for First Choice’s financials, privacy information, complaints, and other vital information as part of potential fraud charges.
First Choice filed a motion in federal court to block the subpoena. Bernadette Tasy from Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative Christian legal advocacy group representing First Choice, said they were unable to comment on The Jersey Bee’s article. However, Lincoln Wilson, Senior Counsel of the Alliance, said in a NJ Spotlight News interview that the subpoena is “a case of unlawful harassment against pregnancy centers.” The group published a rebuke of Platkin’s subpoena on their website in January, stating First Choice had the freedom to practice “constitutionally protected speech” and promote their religious beliefs through the administration of their “pro-life pregnancy centers.”
A New Jersey federal judge heard oral arguments from both sides in October 2024 as First Choice continues to operate centers across north and central New Jersey in Montclair, Newark, Jersey City, Morristown, and New Brunswick. There is no timeline set for the lawsuit’s resolution, according to the Attorney General’s office.
‘Morality police’
“If you’re somebody who’s panicking, you’re not going to look at [the website thoroughly]. You’re just gonna see that little ad and be like, ‘I’m desperate. Let me call,’” says Naomi, who requested her real name be omitted since she never disclosed her abortion to her family.
Naomi says she always knew she didn’t want kids. So when she found out she was pregnant in 2015, she panicked. She was in a rocky relationship with no job and complicated family dynamics.
That’s when she searched online for abortion clinics nearby, and an ad for Life Choices in Metuchen, N.J., popped up instead. At first glance, she says, it seemed like a place she could trust.
When she arrived at Life Choices, Naomi says they asked her to do a pregnancy test strip. But she says it felt like somebody was watching and waiting for her outside while she finished her test. “It felt very invasive.”
She explained to the staff that she wanted an abortion, but they had her watch a video about fetal development and offered a free baby shower and crib if she chose to carry her pregnancy to term, Naomi says.
“They just want you to make the choice that they deem morally right,” she says. “They feel like they are the morality police, when in reality, who are you to be in my uterus?”
Naomi is one of many people affected by New Jersey’s 50-plus anti-abortion centers, but the lack of legal oversight and transparency makes it hard to estimate the exact number of people impacted.
The Jersey Bee reached out to Life Choices in Metuchen for comment, who emailed that their organization’s purpose is to “promote and defend the sanctity of all human life, born and unborn, through the provision of abortion-alternative services and resources that empower mothers and families to CHOOSE LIFE.”
When asked about visitor practices, the Life Choices team denied allegations about showing any videos. “It is not our practice to show videos to our clients. Your source must not have visited our center as there is no pressure to watch anything,” Life Choices wrote. “Life Choices is a common pregnancy center name.” Life Choices told The Jersey Bee the center served more than 350 women and families in 2023 through their services.
While Life Choices in Metuchen confirmed they do not refer or provide abortions, their services include providing information about the “abortion reversal procedure,” “abortion methods and risk factors,” and “abortion recovery.”
“If a visitor comes in or calls seeking abortion services, we explain clearly what we do and don’t do so there is no misunderstanding,” a representative said in an emailed statement.
To understand the experience of people seeking abortion care, The Jersey Bee called Life Choices in Metuchen to ask for information about abortion. The staff did not provide a clear answer immediately, instead encouraging our reporter to “set up an appointment to talk to one of [their] consultants” and offering to text her “literature [they] rely upon, not the media’s messaging.” Five minutes into the conversation, when our reporter explicitly asked whether the location provided abortions, the staff member said that they did not.
Jessica Moreno of the Abortion Justice Committee says that “the most disgusting form of misinformation” advertised by anti-abortion centers like First Choice and Gateway Pregnancy Center is the abortion “reversal” pill, a mix of hormones that have been widely debunked by medical professionals as scientifically unproven and “unethical.”
Leaders of the Abortion Justice Committee worry that these centers are getting more precise with their strategy.
“Think about the term crisis pregnancy center…what [does] that even mean, right?” Kay Escobar, founder of the Abortion Justice Committee of New Jersey, told The Jersey Bee before Escobar’s death in September. “This is a name that these folks gave themselves to mask what it is that they do, and it’s very effective.”
At least 20 states have supported anti-abortion centers with state or federal funding through programs like the Temporary Assistance to Needy Family (TANF) program, according to Equity Forward. We found no evidence New Jersey uses public dollars to fund anti-abortion centers, but these religious ministries have been able to bring their programming to public schools. Real Talk is a high school program run by First Choice that has visited more than 25 schools, according to their website, including four Essex County public high schools Columbia High School in Maplewood, East Orange Campus High School, and Newark’s East Side and Central high schools.
Legislative attempts at regulation
In recent years, New Jersey lawmakers have introduced legislation pushing back against predatory practices of anti-abortion centers.
Senator Teresa Ruiz, of District 29, introduced a bill in 2023 that said certain deceptive practices in pregnancy-related services violate the Consumer Fraud Act, but the bill never made it out of committee. In January 2024, Senator Ruiz introduced a bill that would require ultrasounds on pregnant people to be performed by licensed healthcare workers. The bill remains under consideration by the Senate Health Committee with just two months left in the year’s legislative session.
In April 2024, Congressman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey’s 5th District also co-sponsored the federal Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act in April, which would prohibit and penalize disinformation related to abortion-related services.
But anti-abortion centers have succeeded in defeating lawsuits seeking to regulate them in Illinois and California. In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a California law that required anti-abortion centers to disclose if they had licensed medical providers, arguing the law likely violates the First Amendment. In Illinois, federal judge Ian Johnson blocked a state law in 2023 that would have fined centers up to $50,000 if found using “misinformation, deceptive practices, or misrepresentation” to limit abortion access.
Escobar of the Abortion Justice Committee said these states could serve as important case studies for challenges New Jersey may run up against, adding the state must work within the “legal contours of the current precedent… without being overturned, when inevitably, [anti-abortion centers] sue.”
At Pilgrim Medical Clinic, Claudia Lopez is less concerned about anti-abortion centers most days and more focused on her day-to-day work: providing healthcare to her patients.
“I’m here for all the patients, regardless of their situation, regardless of what they need,” Lopez says. “We want to be able to give these women good health care, safe health care, because it is [what is] needed.”
While some patients do come in traumatized from going to the wrong clinic, Lopez says, her team focuses on making sure they get whatever support they need.
“We try to make them feel as comfortable as possible,” she says.
How to spot an anti-abortion center
New Jersey’s Attorney General issued a consumer alert in 2023 to help people spot anti-abortion centers and ask questions so they can find the healthcare they need.
What do anti-abortion centers look like?
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A website, a call center, an app, or a physical location that looks like or is located near a clinic or doctor’s office.
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A name that is similar to that of a health care provider, including words like “care,” “health,” “pregnancy,” “resource,” and “choice.”
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Offer free services (including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and adoption information) or supplies (including diapers and baby clothes) to individuals seeking abortion or reproductive health care services.
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Offer limited “counseling” services without providing complete or accurate information regarding all options for reproductive health care, including abortion.
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Postpone or reschedule appointments to delay individuals’ access to abortion care.
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Pressure individuals to delay an abortion or continue a pregnancy, including by providing false or misleading information about the safety and legality of abortion care.
Questions to ask to spot anti-abortion centers
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Does this center provide abortions? If so, what type – medical or surgical?
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If you do provide abortions, how much does treatment cost? Does the center accept health insurance or Medicaid?
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If you don’t provide abortion care yourselves, do you provide referrals to a provider where people can find abortion care?
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If I come in for a visit, will I be seen by a licensed medical professional? What kind? (You can check the status of a healthcare provider’s license in New Jersey here. A list of licensed healthcare facilities in New Jersey can be found here.)
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How will my health information and service be protected and kept private?