Preying With Pseudoscience: Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ New, Dangerous Rhetoric

The term crisis pregnancy center (CPC) refers to anti-abortion facilities that mislead, confuse, delay, misinform, and purposefully re-direct pregnant people looking for education and services, including abortion care. They are often referred to as fake clinics, but they are beginning to offer some medical services. Garnet Henderson and Susan Rinkunas, journalists and co-founders of Autonomy News, sit down to talk with us about the new, harmful deceptions that CPCs are rolling out nationwide.

CPCs claim, without good evidence, an in-progress abortion can be halted through an “abortion pill reversal,” or the placement of progesterone between the ingestion of mifepristone and misoprostol—the two medications needed a medication abortion. This is based off myths of anecdotal regret, not scientific studies. In fact, the medical consensus is clear: the "abortion pill reversal" pseudoscience is ineffective and potentially dangerous. A case this Supreme Court term, First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Platkin, stemmed from a subpoena from New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin to the First Choice chain of CPCs, seeking evidence on their abortion pill reversal claims. They have fought the subpoena up to the Supreme Court. 

Meanwhile, the "One Big Beautiful Bill" has cut Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid. Abortion providers are forced to make a choice: continue providing abortions and remain ineligible to participate in Medicaid, or halt abortion services. There is no early gestation ban on abortion in Wisconsin, but Planned Parenthood has chosen not to provide abortions in response to this law. 

LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Autonomy News
Autonomy News on Instagram
Autonomy News on Bluesky
Abortion Pill “Reversal” Is a Hoax. It's Also a Powerful Right-Wing Legal Strategy.
Here’s Which Planned Parenthood Clinics Are Still Seeing Medicaid Patients
How Abortion Pill “Reversal” Became a Powerful Right-Wing Legal Weapon
More information on First Choice Women's Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin
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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

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Jennie: Hi, rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. Hey y'all, I am back from Italy. I am, as you can hear, not completely healthy. We went all over, we had a great trip, and when we hit Venice, my allergies exploded like crazy. Like, I ended up not getting to do the Venice tour because I just stayed in the hotel room feeling pretty miserable that day. The good news is, like, I slept a little, took some drugs, and then I was able to walk around Murano, which was the island we were staying on, and got to go shopping and buy some Murano glass jewelry and just have a chill day. I'm really bummed that I didn't get to go and explore Venice, but that's okay. I enjoyed my day anyway. But we had so much fun. It was great to spend time with my cousins and my aunt, ate so much amazing food, drank wine, discovered Hugo Spritzes, which were delightful, had a Blue Prosecco, which was also delightful, had Limoncello, and got to spend some time in Amalfi and have a Limoncello Spritz when I was there in honor of my old boss, which was also really nice. Yeah, it was so much fun. We traveled all over. We were in Rome and Florence and Cinque Terre and Venice and Naples and Sorrento, Positano, and Pompeii. Like, it was so much fun. I got to see so many wonderful things. It was exhausting. Like, it was a lot of travel all over Italy and early days and long days, and I am ready for a vacation for my vacation. So, I'm very much looking forward to over the weekend doing absolutely nothing but just taking some time to recover. So, that is my plan for this last weekend is to do nothing. I'm very much looking forward to it. And yeah. But it was a great trip. We met so many wonderful people, had a lot of fun. Some people that I'm sure I will keep in touch with, some that will probably also be listening to the podcast. Hi, Julie and Tim. I had so much fun hanging out with y'all. It was just a wonderful trip, and I'm really glad we did it. Like I said, amazing food and took so many pictures. I took a number on my phone, but I also took my good camera with me and took a ton on that. So, I cannot wait to download all of those onto my computer and see those pictures. I haven't had a chance to look at them yet. So maybe among my doing nothing, maybe something else I will do this weekend. We'll see. I really feel like doing absolutely nothing. But yeah, I had a great trip. And then I came back and found out that we are a finalist for an Anthem Award. I am so excited. I am so as always, when any sort of recognition comes for the podcast, I'm so honored and a little bit in awe that people value uh what we are doing. I love doing this podcast. I love all the great conversations we get to have, and I'm so honored that others see the value in them because that means so much to me, because I want this to be a useful tool for our community, for our audience. I just, it means a lot. So, we'll find out if we won in a couple weeks, but until then, there is a Listener's Choice where you can vote for us. We'll make sure to have links on social, and we'll put them in the show notes as well, of where you can go and vote to support rePROs for an Anthem Award. I am just so very excited and grateful to all of you for your support, to Meg, who does our editing and does such a great job editing this podcast, to Rachel and Elena, who do so much work behind the scenes and get nowhere near as much credit as they deserve for all of the amazing work they do. But I see all the work they do every day, and I am so grateful to them, and they make this podcast so much better. Elena does such an outstanding job on our social media, so that is the way you and I see her the most. And Rachel does so much work making sure that you all get your emails if you are signed up for our newsletter. If you're not, you should. She does all of our show notes to make sure that you have a short little blurb about what the podcast is about that makes sense and puts all the show notes together with all of the links and stuff and the take-action items. Just so grateful for all of her work as well. Yeah, I'm just so proud of our very small but very, very mighty team and so proud of them. So, thank you to Rachel and Elena. They are just amazing. Okay, with that, let's go to this week's interview. So, y'all, I got back late Tuesday night and recorded this episode on Thursday, which means I really have not had time to get all caught up on the news. So, I thought, what a great way to come back to schedule an interview with Garnet Henderson and Susan Rinkunas with Autonomy News to talk about the things I missed while I was gone and some of the reporting that they have done. So, I am so excited to have this week's episode focusing on what they have been working on while I have been gone, and we talk about a couple different things. So, with that, let's go to this week's interview. Hi, Garnet and Susan. Thank you so much for being here today.

Garnet: Hi, Jennie. Thank you so much for having us back.

Jennie: Yeah, I'm excited to have you. Before we get started, do you want to do a quick round of introductions? Susan, why don't you go first?

Susan: I am Susan Rinkunas. I'm co-founder of Autonomy News with Garnet, and that is our worker-owned publication where we cover all things reproductive rights and justice.

Garnet: And my name is Garnet. I am an investigative journalist, the other co-founder of Autonomy News. Both Susan and I have been on the repro beat for a very long time, and we joined Forces and launched Autonomy News at the beginning of the summer in June.

Jennie: I'm still so excited for y'all. And you just had a big story that came out as we were talking yesterday, but when y'all are hearing this, so it'll be last week. And I'm really excited to talk about it, but it felt like maybe there was a place we needed to step back a little bit, particularly if there's any new audience who are unfamiliar with some of these things. So, let's start with a couple of definitions or like what things are. So, it's focused on "crisis pregnancy centers," sometimes called anti-abortion centers, and then abortion pill "reversal," which heavy air quotes around all of that. Does one of you want to tackle: what are these things?

Garnet: Sure, I'll jump in. "Crisis pregnancy centers" are anti-abortion facilities that primarily exist to mislead or confuse people who are seeking abortion care. Sometimes trying to outright convince them not to have an abortion, but often just using tactics to delay them in accessing abortion. As many people know, most states have some kind of restriction on abortion access and so delays can actually affect people's ability to ultimately get the abortion that they want to have. And CPCs are also often referred to as fake clinics, but this is something that comes into play in our story. More and more of them are starting to offer at least some medical services, and in at least the case of one small CPC chain in California, um, they're accepting Medicaid, or in California it's called Medi-Cal. So that is something that's happening. Unfortunately, the fake clinic moniker no longer applies to all CPCs because some of them really are trying to become, you know, reproductive health facilities that just don't provide abortion. Susan, do you want to explain abortion pill reversal?

Susan: I sure will. And to explain abortion pill "reversal," just a brief overview of how medication abortion works: it typically involves taking two medications. The first is mifepristone, which halts a pregnancy from continuing, and the second is misoprostol, which makes the uterus contract and expel the pregnancy, essentially mimicking a miscarriage. So, what crisis pregnancy centers are claiming, without good evidence, is that people who are in between taking the first medication and the second one could halt an in-progress abortion. They claim that after taking mifepristone, if someone is prescribed a drug called progesterone, which mifepristone worked as a block in medication abortion, that they could halt the abortion from continuing. Now they are basing this idea on the fact that this flawed concept, this pseudoscience, this gobbledygook, like let's be quite honest, on the flawed idea that people regret their abortions, and that if someone took the first pill and changes their mind all of a sudden, that someone could contact a crisis pregnancy center and be prescribed progesterone to kind of try to undo what they started. And we know from research that people are extremely certain on their decision of an abortion, and like by the time they make the appointment, or you know, that people are very, very certain. So, it is based on this myth that people regret their choice, and it actually could be dangerous to be giving people progesterone after taking mifepristone before taking misoprostol. There was one study that was started in 2019 that tried to follow people through this quote unquote "protocol"— again, scare quotes. It was led by OBGYNs, like legitimate people, not the ideologues who are promoting reversal. And that study actually had to be halted because there were people who were experiencing bleeding and needed to get emergency medical care. So ethically, the study advisors said we can't continue this. So, that's kind of an overview. We can get into more later about crisis pregnancy centers are harping on reversal. It does have to do with the fact that medication abortion has become so much more common in the past, five years, even before that, 10 years, but but they are kind of preying on people with this pseudoscience and trying to say that it's totally fine and safe, and maybe you could even have a continuing pregnancy after you do reversal.

Jennie: Okay, now that we have some of the basics that are at the center of your article laid out, let's talk about this piece that you just co-published with Mother Jones. I found it really interesting. So, I would love to hear y'all talk about it.

Garnet: Sure. So, there are three big national and in some cases international umbrella organizations for crisis pregnancy centers. So, there's Heartbeat International, CareNet, and NIFLA, which stands for National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. There are others, but those are sort of the big three. And a lot of people will maybe be familiar with the name NIFLA because there was a Supreme Court case called NIFLA v. Becerra. That was when Xavier Becerra was the Health Secretary in California, or the Attorney General of California, excuse me, before he became HHS secretary under Joe Biden. And so, that was a case where NIFLA, on behalf of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, sued to overturn a California law that forced unlicensed crisis pregnancy centers to disclose that they were not licensed. And it forced licensed ones— like the ones I mentioned, that are providing some medical services and even maybe accepting insurance— it forced them to actually provide people with information about low-cost family planning services available to them from the state of California. And NIFLA was successful in its challenge to that law. It got the law overturned. And this was before the Supreme Court had its current conservative supermajority, by the way. So, it was a really big blow to efforts to regulate crisis pregnancy centers. And so, an idea that emerged in the wake of that case is that instead states could try to regulate crisis pregnancy centers on the basis of their deceptive speech. So, instead of regulating them based on what they do, regulate them based on essentially false advertising. And abortion pill "reversal" is one of the things that made this approach seem like a slam dunk because the medical consensus on this is so clear: it does not work, it's potentially dangerous, and it's illegal to advertise something to someone that could harm them under all kinds of different federal and state laws. And so, a bunch of state attorneys general have tried to do this. There have been efforts in New York, California, New Jersey, Washington, and then in Colorado. Colorado actually passed the first ban on abortion pill reversal. Unfortunately, that law is currently blocked, enforcement of it is currently blocked. And basically, what our story reveals... someone shared recordings with us from a NIFLA conference that happened in March, and there are two panels that our story is really focused on: one of them was a legal Q and A, and the other one was a medical director's round table, a CPC medical director's roundtable. And the legal Q and A features an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the conservative legal super firm that is behind so many of the attacks on civil rights at the moment. They're the people who wrote the Mississippi abortion ban that was ultimately used to overturn Roe v. Wade. And there's a lot of very frank discussion about how important abortion pill reversal has actually been to their legal strategy and how they're using these attempts by blue state attorneys general who are trying to regulate CPCs, how they've kind of flipped those and they've been able to use them against the state and are trying to set up another Supreme Court case that could actually expand the rights of CPCs to spread medical disinformation. I don't know what you'd want to add, Susan.

Susan: Yeah, I think hearing that we got audio from this conference is interesting, but then you really kind of need to look at the quotes that we've highlighted, which are quite surprising. Garnet mentioned that there's the statements from Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, and also Thomas More Society is another law firm that's involved here. So, just to give listeners an idea of what I'm talking about, basically there's another case out of California now. So, the current Attorney General Rob Bonta sued crisis pregnancy centers. He sued Heartbeat International in 2023 for deceptive advertising, for deception. And they have that case going. But a year later, Alliance Defending Freedom turned around and sued Bonta, representing NIFLA and one of its member CPCs, one in I think Santa Clarita Valley. So, now there are people on this panel in March 2025: okay, well, can we advertise abortion pill reversal? Can we provide referrals for it? What should we be doing given this litigation? And basically, someone, an attorney from NIFLA, one of their vice presidents, told attendees at this legal panel that the organization's quote, official recommendation, quote, is for CPCs in California not to actually prescribe abortion pill reversal, which a few of them do. There's actually a hotline run by Heartbeat so that any providers that actually are willing to do this can send prescriptions via telemedicine. But this attorney, Anne O'Connor, she said, ADF, referring to Alliance of Defending Freedom, ADF recommended, you know, it's better to go conservative in that to allege that our First Amendment rights have been chilled by what the AG is doing. Then an audience member asks, so would you suggest not telling clients about it, abortion pill reversal? And then O'Connor responds, I told you that's the official. And in the audio, you can hear the audience laughing. So, it's crazy to me. And then basically, then Alliance Defending Freedom attorney who was on the panel, Kevin Theriot, piped in and said that there was a difference between giving out information and actually prescribing abortion pill reversal. And he said, quote, "there's a difference between advertising it and giving people information about the possible availability." So, Alliance Defending Freedom is arguing that the state of California is censoring basically the crisis pregnancy centers, that their First Amendment rights are being chilled by this regulation. But behind closed doors, they're talking about how, well, you can still make referrals. It's fine. It's information. They can't do anything about that. And we're going to see them argue in court that basically the opposite. And there was actually a hearing at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week, I believe, in this case, this ADF case against Bonta. So, after there's a ruling in that, that could potentially get appealed up to the Supreme Court, and we'd be, like Garnet said, have another case at the Supreme Court that could in fact give crisis pregnancy centers more license to spread disinformation.

Jennie: This is all just so wild. Like, this is one, I find it just amazing that they are still recommending this procedure to people and telling people about it when, as you said, there was a study that had to be discontinued because of bleeding and that it clearly is a problem, but they still have no problem telling pregnant people that that's something that they should consider that is wild in and of itself, but also that the precedent that this lawsuit could set up is also just like so concerning.

Garnet: Yeah, I mean, Susan just read one of the really kind of shocking quotes, but there's another one where a different attorney from NIFLA, Angie Thomas said, "I think everyone should just go get a t-shirt that says it's just progesterone." And that's another moment where the audience laughed. In fact, when I was going through and transcribing these conversations, I had to note laughter a lot. It was a very, it was like a fun conversation for them, talking about things that could really endanger people. And in fact, in the medical director's roundtable, there's a lot of acknowledgement of some of these risks; a surprising amount, I would say. Karen Poehailos, who is an anti-abortion physician and the assistant medical director at NIFLA, who is also one of those telemedicine providers for the Heartbeat International hotline, she acknowledged that there are a lot of providers who are not willing themselves to prescribe abortion pill reversal, and they will only do an ultrasound for another provider who wants to prescribe. She said that most of her patients, I think she said only three of them have ever been local to her, and the rest have all been through telemedicine, which is very ironic considering the anti-abortion movement's opposition to telehealth for abortion, which we actually know is safe, whereas we have zero information that abortion pill reversal via telemedicine or in general is safe; and in fact, we know it's probably dangerous. And she even mentioned a side effect that is not listed in any of the papers that anti-abortion physicians have published about abortion pill reversal. So, she talks about something called subchorionic hemorrhage or hematoma, which is a common condition, usually in early pregnancy, where blood essentially collects between the gestational sac and the wall of the uterus. And usually that's mild and resolves on its own. However, it is a really common cause of bleeding in early pregnancy, and it doesn't always resolve on its own. And she actually said that most people who do abortion pill reversal will have bleeding, and that if you see one of these subchorionic hemorrhages, you pray it's not a big one. And in fact, she said, "I pray that God protects me," when she's doing abortion pill reversal via telemedicine, which I found to be telling. And yeah, the other thing I wanted to mention is that there is a case in this Supreme Court term, which just started in October, called First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Platkin. So, this is stemming from one of these efforts to regulate CPCs. New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin tried to subpoena First Choice, which is a small chain of CPCs. He wanted information from them, including he asked for information to back up their claims about abortion pill reversal. They have never complied with the subpoena. They sued to block it. And technically, this case is about a really boring question, which is can a CPC run straight to federal court to fight a subpoena like this, or do they need to sue in state court first? So, I realize that seems like whatever, who cares, but it's actually incredibly consequential given how conservative the federal courts are now and how many Trump appointees are sitting in our federal courts. Federal court is a much more favorable venue for any case from a crisis pregnancy center than a state court in, you know, New York, New Jersey, California would be. And so, what is probably going to happen is a favorable decision in this first-choice case will then set up success in the other cases that are making their way to the Supreme Court. So, Susan mentioned the one in California. NIFLA is also suing Letitia James, the attorney general of New York. So, that case will be making its way through the appellate courts as well. In fact, that could result in what's called a circuit split where two appellate courts disagree with each other and the Supreme Court then has to step in and resolve the disagreement. And then there's also that Colorado case about their abortion pill reversal ban. Like I said earlier, enforcement of that is blocked. Technically, it's only blocked for the people who sued over the law, which is one crisis pregnancy center and one nurse practitioner. However, it would be pretty easy for anybody else who wanted to sue and get the law blocked for themselves as well on the basis of that decision. And if Colorado appeals the decision, then that case could also be working its way to the Supreme Court. So basically, there's kind of a boring, seemingly inconsequential case in this Supreme Court term that does really matter because it's going to set up what will actually be a Supreme Court decision about abortion pill reversal and whether or not CPCs are allowed to promote medical disinformation.

Susan: And I just want to jump in and add one thing about the New Jersey case that is going to be heard this term. Garnet mentioned that the First Choice Center is running right to federal court, trying to argue that they do not have to comply with an attorney general subpoena. And again, the normal court session there would be state court. But again, as Garnet mentioned, the federal court has so many Trump-appointed justices that conservatives are going there as often as they can. I do want to point out to folks that this is not unlike another Alliance Defending Freedom case, actually, two cases, the 303 Creative Web Designer case from... what is time? I think that was 2023. But basically in that case, the web designer had never not only had she never been disciplined by the state, she never actually designed, was asked to design a website for a gay couple. She claimed that someone reached out to her, but reporting from The New Republic found that that was fake. The person who reached out to her was a straight man who'd been married for years before uh that request was ever made. So, she had no injury, right? You had to have an injury to go to court and sue, and she had no injury. And then a case in this term— another Alliance Defending Freedom case— is Chiles v. Salazar, which is trying to overturn Colorado's ban on conversion therapy, aka trying to tell LGBTQ kids that they are trying to force LGBTQ kids to be straight or be cisgender. A counselor has also not been disciplined by the state, and she is going into court and saying that the law harms her free speech. So, this is when we look at these things in broad patterns, this New Jersey case has the echoes of these other things where right-wing law firms like Alliance Defending Freedom know that this strategy has worked for them in the past, that the Supreme Court will be like, yeah, sure, you've got standing, it's fine, we'll overturn this law. And that isn't how it should go, but because this supermajority on the court has rewarded them in the past, like, yeah, let's do it again. Let's do it for crisis pregnancy centers.

Jennie: Okay, before we move on to another story, is there anything else you wanted to say? I feel like there was so much in this article that we could talk about. I just wanted to flag if there was anything else y'all wanted to raise. I found the numbers really shocking, like, that they had two to three calls a year at that hotline a couple years ago, which is wild to think that there's so few. That was just something that stood out.

Garnet: Yeah, I think one thing that I would add is that we do have an anecdote from Calla Hales, who runs a Preferred Women's Health Center, which has clinics in North Carolina and Georgia. And she says that post-Dobbs, she has actually started to see patients at her clinics get ensnared by abortion pill reversal. About one a month is kind of the rate that they're experiencing this right now. And so, what's happening is that people are calling back to her clinic and saying, now I want to reverse my reversal. And they kind of just have to tell those patients to come back in, right? Because those patients need to be seen to make sure that they're okay and to decide on the best course of treatment. And so, that means often that people have to travel again out of whatever banned state they may have traveled to North Carolina from. You know, it's really awful. And so, yes, Heartbeat International, which runs the hotline. Well, let me back up one step. So, there's a study that came out that was published this year by the folks behind CPC Map, which found that only 3.8% of CPCs are offering abortion pill reversal on site. So, most of them are providing information about it, and then they're referring people to this Heartbeat Hotline. So, the Heartbeat Hotline complains that it has quote unquote "saved thousands of babies," although I think they're saying it's 7,000 since the start in 2012. So that still doesn't break down, even if we accept that number, which I don't believe we should, but even if we did, it doesn't actually work out to like that many cases a year. And we know that CPCs have a habit of counting every single contact as a client. So, I'm gonna bet that if that number is real, it's the number of contacts, probably not the number of people who've gone through with a quote-unquote "reversal" treatment. But medication abortion is exploding in popularity, right? The rate of medication abortions in the US doubled from 2014 to 2023. It's now almost two-thirds of all abortions. And so, it does make sense that even if there's a very small number of people who kind of get ensnared by this reversal myth, that that number would have increased at least somewhat as the medication abortion rate increases. And so, I just think it's important to keep in mind the human impact of that because people who have to travel out of state to have abortions, which is most of Calla's patients in particularly North Carolina, and also to an extent in Georgia, are already going through an incredibly difficult time. And then the fact that those people are getting drawn in by a complete scam and guilted. We know from the Turnaway Study that people who are more likely to experience negative feelings about their abortions are ones who have higher levels of abortion stigma in their communities. So, people who are already probably feeling guilt and shame, and then that is being used against them. It's not only dangerous, it's really manipulative and cruel.

Jennie: Okay, so let's turn to another thing that y'all have been doing is following what we are seeing is the fallout from the one big terrible bill that defunded Planned Parenthood and. And I'm from Wisconsin, so that was that hit close to home, as seeing how some of the Planned Parenthood affiliates are deciding to react to that information. Let's talk about what you have found.

Susan: Yes, we found that Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is halting abortions, has halted abortions as of October 1st, and that was in response to the federal law that defunds abortion providers. And defunding, as your listeners likely know, is about kicking abortion providers out of the Medicaid program. And that puts abortion providers in a tough situation because they have to choose what they're going to do after a law like that goes into effect. They either have to halt providing abortions so that they can remain in Medicaid, or they would continue providing abortions and then no longer be eligible to participate so that they wouldn't get any reimbursement for Medicaid patients coming in for other services like birth control, STI screening, and basic reproductive health care. The problem is that abortion clinics do often see a high amount of Medicaid patients, so that if they do not get that reimbursement, that really threatens their ability to stay open. So, it's like you either choose to keep clinics open or you choose to keep providing abortions, is the short summary of the choice here. And we've been following this law from when it was being debated in Congress and going, you know, getting signed and going through lawsuits. We had been informed that Planned Parenthood was actually going to allow some of its affiliates to drop abortion care if they so choose in order to remain eligible in Medicaid. Now there are roughly four dozen affiliates around the country. So, it wasn't clear how many would actually opt for that. But what we did find is that Planned Parenthood Wisconsin has done so, and it appears to be the only one thus far. And this is interesting because it is one, it's just, you know, a real example of the fallout of this bill and how it's going to harm people, but also Wisconsin still has legal abortion. This is what we believe is the first time that Planned Parenthood is halting abortions in a state where abortion is legal after the Dobbs decision. Obviously, a lot of states have had to- clinics and states have had to stop providing abortion, but that's because of a ban. There is no early gestation ban on abortion in Wisconsin, but Planned Parenthood has chosen not to provide abortions in response to this law. And one thing that we know from their previous statements is that 60%, so nearly two-thirds of their patients have Medicaid for insurance. So, that was one point of information that the affiliate was drawing attention to during the fight over the law because they said if this law does take effect, it would really harm that affiliate in particular.

Garnet: Yeah, and so we reported the news that Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin was going to and ultimately did pause abortion care. We have also contacted every single Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country to ask whether they are still providing abortions and whether they can still see Medicaid patients. Because another thing that happened shortly after Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said we'll no longer provide abortions, Planned Parenthood Arizona came out and said we can no longer see patients with Medicaid. So, we contacted every single affiliate. There are a few we haven't heard back from. So, if you're listening to this and you work for one of those affiliates, please get back to us because we want the public to have information about your services. We believe that that's important. And what I would say the majority of affiliates have told us for now is that they're still seeing patients with Medicaid. Let me see. Yeah, so 25 affiliates have told us that they're still providing abortions and still seeing patients who have Medicaid insurance on a low-cost or no cost basis. Like, they either have free services or some kind of sliding scale, which is great, except in many cases that came with a for now caveat, right? Because it's been interesting. We've asked every affiliate: what percentage of patients with Medicaid do you see? As Susan mentioned, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has a really high percentage at 60. There are a few affiliates where the percentage is even higher than that, but a few where it was much lower, like even 5%, which is interesting because you know we think about Planned Parenthood as a safety net health provider, and certainly it is, but clearly it's just not the same in every state and every region how many Medicaid patients are relying on Planned Parenthood. So, some of those affiliates that have a lower proportion of Medicaid patients really might be able to absorb that cost, especially if they can get some extra donation revenue. But some of these affiliates that are telling us they had, you know, 70, 80, like, 90% patients on Medicaid who are still seeing those patients but not billing Medicaid, they are not going to be able to do that forever. And so unfortunately, I think there's a big caveat there, and there's really no telling how long that can last. And I think that's why some affiliates told us, yes, we're still seeing patients who have Medicaid, but they have to self-pay, you know, and we do have a discount for self-pay, but that then puts those patients in the position of maybe trying to go somewhere else where their Medicaid is accepted, but there can often be very long wait times, especially if you're trying to get something like an IUD. A lot of the community health facilities that treat low-income people and are primarily catered to low-income people have much longer wait times than Planned Parenthood historically has. So, it's just a real loss, really, any way you slice it.

Susan: Absolutely. And I just want to add one thing to what Garnet said, which is yes, we got a lot of those comments that affiliates who are continuing to see patients with, you know, discounts or financial assistance did say for now, the "defund" provision in the law is for one year. And having it be quote unquote "only one year" was better than a previous version of the bill that had a defund for 10 years. But even so, the amount of reimbursement that these clinics will be losing in a one-year period is very, very high. So, it's not even clear if clinics will be able to sustain this for a year. I think that we should assume that clinics will not be able to sustain this for a year. So, there will be more we anticipate there will be more changes in the coming months, which is why we contacted these affiliates, why we have this list. And yes, like Garnet said, if you work for one of these affiliates, please respond to our uh email. It is a public service, not just patients, but also for workers at abortion funds and even supporters of certain affiliates, right, who want to know what's what's going on in their community. So, this is a resource that we chose to publish for everyone to have.

Jennie: And then I'll just also flag for Wisconsin. Yes, Planned Parenthood is not providing abortions, but they are not the only abortion providers in the state. There are two independent abortion providers. Unfortunately, they are both in Milwaukee, in the Milwaukee area, so that leaves a huge swath of the state without easy access. But there are two independent abortion providers who are still providing abortion in the Milwaukee area. So, just wanted to make sure you can still it is still legal, you can still get it. It's just you can't get it at Planned Parenthood right now. Okay, Garnet, Susan, thank you so much for being here. It was so much fun to get to talk to you about the great new reporting you have going on and just to see your faces.

Susan: Thanks, Jennie.

Garnet: Thank you so much for having us, Jennie.

Jennie: Okay, y'all. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Susan and Garnet. I always have so much fun talking to them, and it was great to hear about some of the things that have been happening while I was gone. And with that, I will see everybody next week. [music outro]

If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com, or you can find us on social media or at rePROs Fight Back on Facebook and Twitter, or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and want to make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you want to make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks, all.