Telehealth Crisis Pregnancy Centers??

6.30.25

Click to skip ahead: In Anti-Abortion Strategy, the new conservative plan to co-opt telehealth. In the States, news from Arkansas, Ohio, Louisiana, Maryland, and more. In Rest in Peace, Adriana, some words from Adriana Smith’s funeral. In the Nation, the latest on the efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. And in Another Day, Another Talking Point, a messaging strategy on Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill.’ Stats & Studies compares young men’s beliefs on abortion in the UK and US. And in Policing Pregnancy, the latest on the Texas man being charged with murder for slipping his girlfriend abortion pills.

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Anti-Abortion Strategy: Co-Opting Telehealth

Since Roe was overturned, there’s been no bigger game-changer for abortion access than telehealth. Abortion medication shipped to patients in states with bans is a leading reason why we haven’t seen a decrease in the number of abortions nationally.

In fact, the latest data shows that 1 in 4 abortions are now provided via telehealth. Given all that, it’s no surprise conservatives have been so eager to restrict or eliminate it. Until now, that is!

Apparently anti-abortion activists are launching their own telehealth company—basically a virtual crisis pregnancy center—with the goal of becoming a household name as big as Planned Parenthood.

The news comes to us via this must-read piece about crisis pregnancy center funding in Oklahoma: Created by the anti-abortion organization Heroic Media, “Her First” calls itself “a groundbreaking telehealth service offering women compassionate and accessible care.”

The company says they’re not just about “transforming healthcare,” but “creating a trustworthy brand for women to turn to in their greatest moments of need.” And that brand? It’s all about pretending to be feminist. Just check out their mission tagline:

“To restore justice and dignity to women by guaranteeing their Right to Support when facing an unexpected pregnancy.”

But as is always the case with these groups, the pro-woman guise is just that—a front. Abortion, Every Day snagged a couple of the videos from their page, and they are…something. (Seriously, don’t miss the second one.)

The focus on branding is pretty crass, even by anti-abortion standards. But it makes sense once you take even the most cursory look at the man who founded Heroic Media: Brett Atterbery, author of the hilariously-named book, “Your Pro-Life Bottom Line: How You Can End Abortion by Investing in Groundbreaking Consumer Marketing Strategies That Encourage Women to Choose Life.” (Try saying that five times fast!)

It’s easy to make fun of, but “Her First” is getting almost half a million dollars from Oklahoma. Atterbery also has plans to set up around the country. After all, it’s telehealth—so the options are endless.

And it’s not just the potential for misleading women that’s alarming: it’s what this tells us about the anti-abortion funding ecosystem.

The group’s IRS 990 filing looks like so many other anti-abortion groups and crisis pregnancy centers: a lot of money going to salaries, marketing, and ads—and very little actually helping women. Of the nearly three million dollars the organization spent in 2023, over $750,000 went to salaries and wages. Just 70,000 went to “telehealth.”

And here’s the thing: Regardless of what happens with this particular organization, this is just the beginning. The massive increase in unregulated state funding for anti-abortion groups is a scammers’ paradise! Think about all of the groups that are going to claim to help women while pocketing taxpayer cash.

For a glimpse of what crisis pregnancy centers really spend their money on, revisit this excellent piece from ProPublica, or this piece from The Assembly. (Spoiler: How many diapers do you think an employee treadmill could buy?)

In the States

Arkansas anti-abortion activists are not happy with the latest abortion data from #WeCount—which shows that the number of abortions actually went up since the state passed its abortion ban. They claim that the Society of Family Planning’s project overcounted how many women ended their pregnancies by relying too heavily on abortion medication.

Rose Mimms, executive director of Arkansas Right to Life, said, “They’re wanting to say that more women want abortions, and I don’t think that’s the case.” She insists that the increased number of medication abortions were actually women buying advance provision pills.

If we learned anything over the past three years across the country, it’s that bans don’t lower the abortion rate—they only increase harm. But anti-abortion groups can’t admit that their laws don’t do shit but hurt people. So they’re desperate to claim the numbers are wrong.

Some more abortion data news, this time out of Ohio: Republicans there are one step closer to expanding state surveillance of pregnant people. The general assembly passed the state operating budget bill out of committee last week, creating more reporting requirements for abortion providers and making more of patients’ data publicly available.

Abortion, Every Day warned about this back in April: In addition to the existing annual abortion report, the state department of health would be required to create an eerily named “public electronic dashboard” that shares abortion patients’ information every single month.

The bill also expands the kinds of data providers must collect—down to patient ZIP codes and the “number of zygotes, blastocytes, embryos, or fetuses previously aborted.”

And then they’d put it all on a public website. All of this is happening against a backdrop of growing state surveillance of pregnancies and rising pregnancy-related arrests.

By the way—we’ve seen this tactic before! Indiana Republicans, for example, have pushed to make abortion reports public records like birth or death certificates. Why? Because making this data public lets anti-abortion groups comb through it for supposed “violations” to feed to the attorney general.

Ohio Republicans aren’t stopping there. The budget also sets aside $5 million for 3D ultrasound machines for crisis pregnancy centers, and offers tax breaks to people who donate to them—a move the Ohio Capital Journal notes could cost the state $900,000 in revenue.

That’s money that could actually help families in need—something that CPCs very pointedly do not do! And remember: all of this is happening even after voters codified abortion protections in the state constitution.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed that awful bill we told you about last month. The “Justice for Victims of Abortion Drug Dealers Act” (I know, I know) was meant to expand civil liability around abortion—and scare the shit out of abortion-seekers considering getting pills shipped from out of state.

As originally written, the bill would have allowed patients, the fetus’s father—and even grandparents—to sue anyone who “performs, causes, aids, or abets an abortion” for at least $100,000. Plaintiffs could have also sued for money for emotional distress and attorneys’ fees. The idea was to target out-of-state providers and abortion funds, specifically. (Earlier this year, Louisiana indicted New York abortion provider Maggie Carpenter.)

But apparently the bill was too extreme even for Louisiana’s conservative legislature, and was seriously weakened before it was sent to Landry. The law now simply gives women who’ve had abortions more time to bring civil actions against abortion providers.

Michelle Erenberg of Lift Louisiana tells me that’s not too much more than what the state law already allowed:

“But what we know now is what they want to do—use whatever means they can to stop people from giving information or any assistance to someone trying to get an abortion in Louisiana.”

In better news…

One of the new laws that goes into effect in Maryland tomorrow makes $25 million available for uninsured and underinsured abortion patients. Maryland is the first state to use money collected from a surcharge on insurance plans sold under the Affordable Care Act to fund a Public Health Abortion Grant Program.

Love to see it!

Quick hits:

• Planned Parenthood of Illinois says that the number of out-of-state abortion patients hasn’t let up;

• The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on how Republicans’ budget bill could destroy Wisconsin Planned Parenthoods;

• Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey says that abortion and marriage equality are “non-negotiable”;

• And the Idaho Statesman editorial board looks back at three years without Roe and notes that there’s “a disconnect between what Republican legislators are doing and what voters want.”

Rest in Peace, Adriana

Adriana Smith was laid to rest on Saturday. The mother and nurse died in February, when doctors declared her brain dead. But because Adriana was 9-weeks pregnant at the time, Emory Hospital told her family that Georgia’s abortion ban meant they couldn’t take her off life support. Doctors extracted Adriana’s son via c-section a few weeks ago.

Across the country, Smith’s story rightfully inspired outrage, embodying the absurdity and cruelty that can be wrought by abortion bans—as we all watched a Georgia hospital reduce Smith’s body to a state incubator.

At Smith’s funeral, her sister recalled “everything that she’s taught me—her love, her kindness, her wisdom,” adding, “family meant everything to her.”

State Rep. Park Cannon also presented a Georgia House resolution to honor Smith, demanding that the state recognize pregnant patients’ bodily autonomy:

“We believe bodily autonomy should be upheld in Georgia by enacting Adriana’s Law, which would affirm that individuals retain agency over their bodies and medical decisions even under restrictive fetal personhood regimes.”

As you’ll recall, Georgia Republicans have desperately tried to distance themselves from Smith’s case, with Attorney General Chris Carr denying that the abortion ban had anything to do with how Smith was treated. Leading anti-abortion groups did the same, if they said anything at all.

Meanwhile, Smith’s mother put it best back in May: “We want the baby. That’s a part of my daughter. But the decision should have been left to us—not the state.”

You can donate to the family’s GoFundMe here.

In the Nation

Let’s play the world’s least fun guessing game of all time: how much will defunding Planned Parenthood—as proposed by Republicans’ so-called “big, beautiful bill”—cost taxpayers??? According to the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, stripping Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health providers of federal funding will cost taxpayers $52 million over the next decade.

It should be pretty self-explanatory why that is: stripping people of birth control, STI treatment, cancer screenings, and other vital (sometimes life-saving) preventative care is costly.

One component of the, uh, “BBB,” adds reproductive health organizations who offer abortion care to a list of “prohibited entities” that can’t receive federal funding. Senate Democrats asked the Senate Parliamentarian—who just blocked a provision of the bill that would have effectively blocked Affordable Care Act plans from covering abortion—to review whether this piece of the bill defunding Planned Parenthood could remain.

Unfortunately, the parliamentarian approved the language this afternoon. Sen. Patty Murray, who called this ruling from the parliamentarian a “green light” for Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, then introduced an amendment to strike that feature of the bill, which Senate Republicans promptly blocked.

You probably heard a lot about this bill over the weekend: Trump intends to use the sweeping reconciliation bill to pass his whole, vile agenda. It would cut $930 billion from Medicaid, increase the number of people without health insurance by at least 11.8 million, and allocate $45 billion for new immigration jails.

It’s not yet clear whether Republicans have the votes to pass this Frankenstein’s monster of a bill. But no matter what happens, make no mistake: Trump and Congressional Republicans absolutely have their sights on defunding reproductive health care. There’s a reason Planned Parenthood calls the bill a “backdoor abortion ban.”

Quick hits:

• PBS NewsHour has five things to know about the SCOTUS decision that opens the door to defunding Planned Parenthood;

• Ms. magazine puts the same SCOTUS case into post-Dobbs perspective;

• CBS News on how the Trump administration is eliminating CDC staff that makes sure birth control is safe for women at risk;

• And USA Today has a data map on how abortion access has changed since the end of Roe.

Another Day, Another Talking Point

While we’re waiting to see what happens with Republicans’ ‘big beautiful bill’, a reminder about their bullshit messaging: Back in January, I flagged that anti-abortion groups were trying to find a way to make federal attacks on abortion jive with Donald Trump’s promise to leave abortion “to the states.”

Specifically, I warned that Republicans and anti-abortion groups would claim that defunding Planned Parenthood was just a way to get the federal government out of abortion—and therefore was leaving it up to the states.

Lo and behold, that’s exactly what anti-abortion groups are claiming. Today, Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins tweeted about the bill, saying, “Trump wants abortion out of the federal government.”

It’s an important message for conservatives—after all, they’ve seen the same polling we have, showing that voters don’t want the federal government involved in abortion. So they need to figure out a way to make their unprecedented attacks on reproductive health care fit into that framing.

Stats & Studies

This is international news, but I think worth mentioning: New polling shows that less than half of young UK men believe abortion should be legal at all. Only 46% of 16- to 34-year old males believe abortion should be legal, a stark statistic that The Independent links to the “rise of the manosphere.”

That seems about right to me, especially considering we’re seeing a similar troubling gender gap on abortion here in the U.S.—where young men are increasingly skewing conservative.

Something to keep a wary eye on.

“What viability limits are saying is that there are good abortions and bad abortions, which is problematic all by itself. But you’re also creating soft fetal personhood, because you’re saying: There is a moment when an abortion becomes bad; there is a moment when the government gets to involve itself in someone’s womb; there is a moment where the pregnant person disappears in favor of a governmental interest in the child or the fetus.

It’s that simple: If a fetus is considered a separate person under the law, and if you’re saying, “Here’s the line where that fetus becomes a separate person,” there are no limits to what a state can do after that moment under the guise of protecting that fetus. And that is never going to end well for the pregnant person.”

- Karen Thompson, Legal Director of Pregnancy Justice, in an interview with Mother Jones

Policing Pregnancy

Remember the Texas man who faces murder charges for allegedly, non-consensually slipping his girlfriend abortion pills? When the story broke, Abortion, Every Day warned that this case had nothing to do with protecting women from abusive men—but furthering ‘fetal personhood’.

We pointed out that Justin Banta isn’t accused of any crime against his girlfriend, but of her fetus. In other words: according to Texas, she isn’t the victim—her pregnancy is. The Texas Tribune covered the case today, speaking to Texas legal experts who point out the same. Here’s Southern Methodist University law professor Joanna Grossman:

“The purpose of this has nothing to do with caring whether this woman was victimized, but it's about trying to establish fetal personhood in a more direct way than they've been able to.”

Grossman also says that the case is a “trial balloon” for the anti-abortion movement—they know Banta is unsympathetic, and they’re using that as an opportunity to push their real agenda. That’s exactly what AED wrote, too:

“Banta’s case gives them the unsympathetic villain they need to convince Americans that fetal personhood and ‘equal protection’ laws are good things—laying the groundwork for the sweeping arrests they’re so desperate for.”

And while the Tribune reports the case won’t have a direct impact on whether abortion patients can be charged—I see this case as part of a broader, longer-term plan to do just that. For more, revisit our coverage below:

Three Years After Dobbs, They’re Coming for Patients