Anti-pregnancy center pro-abortion group attacks again, files consumer complaint

A consumer complaint has been filed in multiple states accusing pro-life pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) of “deceptive data collection and privacy practices.” The group behind the complaint is none other than the pro-abortion Campaign for Accountability (CFA), which is heavily funded by abortion philanthropists.

Live Action News previously documented the Campaign for Accountability’s clear pro-abortion bias and pointed attacks meant to discredit pregnancy help centers.

Archived CFA webpages reveal the group’s purpose is to “use[] research, litigation, and aggressive communications to hold the anti-choice movement accountable.” CFA previously admitted to targeting pro-life organizations to stop them from “gaining traction” in ending abortion.

CFA also wrote, “Campaign for Accountability’s Themis Project is working to hold the anti-choice movement accountable and fighting to protect reproductive rights at the state and national level.” In Greek mythology, Themis is a goddess of justice and order. But in an abortion, the right to life of an innocent human being with no voice is taken, without due process — an unjust act.

CFA’s press release alleges that so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (now more commonly referred to as pregnancy resource centers or pregnancy help centers) “appear to violate consumer protection laws by telling clients their personal health information (PHI) is protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)—a law both Care Net and Heartbeat have acknowledged does not apply to the vast majority of these centers.”

CFA’s consumer complaints follow threats of litigation against pro-life PRCs in other states.

In October of last year, a lawsuit was filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, claiming pro-life pregnancy centers “used fraudulent and misleading claims to advertise an unproven and largely experimental procedure called ‘abortion pill reversal (APR).’”

Last week, the New York State Office of the Attorney General sent a letter of proposed litigation to pro-life pregnancy resource centers for alleged “misleading statements” regarding the so-called “abortion pill reversal” protocol. This protocol involves administering the natural pregnancy hormone progesterone to outcompete the progesterone-suppressing action of the mifepristone abortion pill.

Campaign for Accountability (CFA) is Pro-Abortion 

The Campaign for Accountability (CFA) is pro-abortion, yet the group deceptively claims to be “nonpartisan” online.

CFA’s consumer complaint claims it is “a nonprofit organization that exposes misconduct and malfeasance in public life,” but as Live Action News will demonstrate, the group is clearly pro-abortion — although it’s been archiving its older web pages to obscure this fact.

CFA previously called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “seize the website domains” for groups that market APR, and even sent a letter asking the FDA to shut down the websites of pro-life organizations that promote APR.

Consumer Complaint

An e-mail sent to Minnesota supporters by Gender Justice (a pro-abortion group funded by the Buffett Foundation) claimed CFA recently filed consumer complaints in multiple states, like Minnesota, Idaho, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

Live Action News reviewed the complaint sent to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. It cited the “Minnesota Consumer Fraud Act (CFA),” the “Minnesota Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA),” and the “Federal Trade Commission (‘FTC’)” and claimed that PRCs, referred to as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), “represent themselves as legitimate reproductive health care clinics providing care for pregnant people but actually aim to dissuade people from accessing certain types of reproductive health care, including abortion care and even contraceptive options.”

The complaint also alleged that PRCs “intentionally target women searching for legitimate abortion care providers to ‘save babies’ from abortion.”

“As a Minnesota nonprofit engaged in trade and commerce,” these PRCs are “subject to the state’s consumer protection laws,” the complaint claimed. It alleged that a PRC “advertises and distributes many services in the state, including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and pregnancy counseling. Though these services are offered without charge to clients, Amnion receives donations to provide its services.”

Most — if not all — PRCs are donor-funded, receiving support from donors in their local communities. Some also receive government grants. This is not unusual.

CFA’s complaint went on to claim that the PRC appears to be in “violation of Minnesota’s prohibition against fraud and intentional misrepresentation.”

Free Services

According to CFA’s consumer complaint to the Minnesota AG, one pro-life pregnancy center there “offers its services without charge, so it potentially serves more vulnerable populations, including immigrants with limited English proficiency and minors, who frequently cannot afford or do not have easy access to medical offices and clinics.”

Is this problematic?

Planned Parenthood regularly offers “services without charge” for “low income” and “potentially vulnerable” clients, including abortions — and these services are frequently covered by use of taxpayer-funded Medicaid or other insurance plans.

According to this 2023 sliding scale chart, Planned Parenthood in California will kill the preborn children of extremely low-income women upon request, free of charge. (A household of four would need to make under $10,000 yearly to qualify for free services. In the next group, a person from a household of four making just over $10k up to just over $21k yearly would pay $187 for the abortion pill.)

The chart states that “PPOSBC offers a sliding scale fee based on household size and income. This means, you pay what you can afford. The bottom line: no one will be turned away from receiving care.”

Abortion has long been tethered to eugenics, with certain segments of society — including communities of color — targeted to this day for eugenic abortions. Advocates of abortion often paint the killing of the children of the disadvantaged as a solution to poverty, or as a stepping stone out of a life of poverty. But the facts simply do not bear this out.

Preventing Abortion

The Minnesota complaint seems to demonstrate that CFA is bothered by the fact that pro-life pregnancy centers offered services “preventing abortion,” while Planned Parenthood claims to do the same.

The consumer complaint filed by pro-abortion CFA alleged that “Though CPCs hold themselves out as medical service providers, they are, in reality, ‘ministries’ with the mission of preventing abortion” and added that they are “not, however, a traditional medical clinic.”

“Preventing abortion” appears to only be a bad thing when pro-life pregnancy centers claim this as a goal, while the pro-abortion lobby often claims their efforts and “services” do the same.

Case in point: Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion corporation in the nation, which broke its record and committed nearly 400K abortions in 2023, all while actual health services declined, often brags that the services they provide, like TitleX Family Planning and providing contraceptives, work in “preventing abortion.”

“First and foremost, Planned Parenthood does more than any other organization in the United States to prevent abortions. Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of birth control and family planning and sex education in the United States,” says Texas Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast on its website.

This claim has been repeated by the organization for decades. And yet, no CFA consumer complaint appears to have been filed against any pro-abortion groups.

Privacy Concerns

The same Minnesota consumer complaint, according to CFA, also alleges that one pro-life pregnancy center in the state is asking “consumers requesting an appointment to provide sensitive personal and health information, including first and last name, phone number, email address, date of birth, first day of last period, interest in obtaining abortion care, and interest in specific pregnancy services.”

The complaint also alleged that the PRC “collects this sensitive personal and medical information while making numerous representations suggesting it maintains the confidentiality of this data, invoking the federal Health Insurance Portability and Protection Accountability Act (‘HIPAA’).”

And CFA alleged the PRC “may be sharing information regarding pregnant clients with outside individuals, entities, or even members of law enforcement, in pursuit of its mission.”

While none of the allegations made against pro-life centers have been proven, Live Action News previously documented multiple violations of privacy (2016, 2017, older) under the federal HIPAA law taking place at Planned Parenthood (PP), including massive privacy breaches and abuses due to PP’s negligence, exposing thousands of PP patients.

In addition, Live Action News has also documented privacy breaches at abortion facilities across the nation (here, here, here, here.)

An April 2024 review of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) notification portal archive page reveals multiple privacy breaches against Planned Parenthood, including “hacking incidents,” “Unauthorized Access/Disclosures,” as well as an “Improper Disposal” of private client information.

In total, these larger breaches affected over half a million Planned Parenthood clients, yet CFA’s “nonpartisan” complaints do not appear to target Planned Parenthood.

• Los Angeles (409,579)
• Metro Washington (142,982)
• Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (515 in 2018, 2,506 in 2016)
• Greater Washington and North Idaho (10,700)
• Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio (5,000)

CFA complains that the “client portal for communications and record keeping” at the Minnesota PRC is “designed by eKyros for ‘Christ-centered Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRC)’ to support their ‘core mission of saving LIVES.'”

There is, however, no CFA consumer complaint about Blackbaud — a data management software and cloud computing software vendor of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and several affiliates which “compromised some donor data” for multiple Planned Parenthood affiliates across the nation — even after Planned Parenthood posted a notice regarding a security breach at Blackbaud.

Nor has CFA mentioned TAB, a records management company working with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for over a decade, even though they identified what they called “some serious problems” with the records of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, which oversees 17 branch locations.

In TAB’s document, they suggested that the corporation’s records were getting lost in the mail and seen by those not employed by PP.

The abortion industry has a terrible record of protecting patient privacy. A recent review of abortion business websites revealed that “99.1% of US based abortion clinic web pages include third-party tracking, transferring user data to a median of 9 unique entities.”

CFA Funded by Abortion Philanthropists

What might motivate CFA to file a consumer complaint?

As they say, follow the money — which shows that CFA has been funded by pro-abortion philanthropists such as the Buffett Foundation, the Hopewell Fund, and the (Soros) Open Society Foundations.

Live Action News has documented multiple times how the Buffett Foundation and billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations invested in the abortion pill in its early days. In addition, the Buffett Foundation and other abortion pill investors have financed studies used to convince the public that abortion is safe, yet the media fails to point out any conflicts of interest.

In 2020, the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation gave CFA nearly $400,000, while in 2021, Open Society granted CFA $500,000.

Buffett Foundation

According to Capital Research, the Buffett Foundation “paid about $675 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America [PPFA] and its international and state-level affiliates from 2000 to 2018.”

In 2020 alone, Buffett granted over $22 million to PPFA, the largest abortion business in the nation, and millions to International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

In 2020, Buffett also funded other pro-abortion groups, such as:

• $275K – Feminist Women’s Health Center abortion facility
• $7 million – Guttmacher Institute
• $500K – IBIS Reproductive Health
• Over $5 million- National Abortion Federation (NAF)
• Over $57 million- NAF Hotline
• Nearly $2M- National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF).

In addition, the Buffett Foundation, which once deceptively started a church as a front group for abortion, also granted the Hopewell Fund over $18 million.

Hopewell Fund

Live Action News previously documented how Hopewell heavily funds abortion businesses across the country.

Hopewell Fund’s 2022 990 reveals the organization provided grants to multiple abortion funding organizations — which directly pay for abortions — to abortion organizations like NARAL and the National Abortion Federation, as well as multiple abortion facilities.

Below are just some of the abortion businesses Hopewell has funded:

• $400K – A Woman’s Choice of Charlotte
• $211K – A Woman’s Choice of Greensboro 
• $400K – A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville 
• $200 – A Woman’s Choice of Raleigh
• $114K – Abortion Care Network (ACN)
• $500K – Allegheny Reproductive Health Center
• $10K – California Abortion Fund
• $200K – Cherry Hill Women’s Center
• $50K – Full Circle Center
• $35K – Hope Medical Group
• $300K – International Planned Parenthood (IPPF)
• $110K – Little Rock Family Planning
• $35K – Northland Family Planning
• $10K – Pills by Post
• $100K – Regents of the University of California San Francisco
• $450K – Southwest Women’s Options
• $540K – Summit Medical Associates
• $235K – Whole Woman’s of Charlotte

Hopewell Fund’s 2021 990 reveals the organization granted $59,500 to the Abortion Care Network (ACN), $76,500 to Advocates for Youth (AFY), $80,000 to various NARAL chapters, $75,000 to the National Abortion Federation (NAF), $75,000 to Physicians for Reproductive Health (PRH), over $450,000 to the University of California, and $300,000 to Women’s March, among others.

In addition, Hopewell also granted money to various abortion funds, including $30,000 to the D.C. Abortion Fund, nearly $11,000 to Fund Texas Choice, and $11,000 to the Midwest Access Coalition Access Fund.

In just one year (2021) the Hopewell Fund granted millions to these abortion businesses:

• Over $100K to A Woman’s Choice in Charlotte and Jacksonville
• $132.8K to the Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services in San Antonio
• $134.3K to Alleghany Reproductive Health Center in Pittsburgh
• $55K to Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey
• $22K to Choices Women’s Center in Tucson
• Over $152K to Eastland Women’s Clinic in Michigan
• Nearly $90K to Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta
• Nearly $20K to Gainesville Woman Care in Florida
• Nearly $300K to Houston Women’s Clinic
• $264K to JTP a/k/a Just the Pill online dispensary
• Nearly $50K to North Florida Women’s Services in Tallahassee
• $110K to Pilgrim Medical Center in New Jersey
• $50K to Preterm Clinic in Cleveland
• $23 K to the Richmond Medical Center for Women in Virginia
• $121K to Southern Tier Women’s Health Services in New York
• Nearly $180K to Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center in Dallas
• $50K to the Afiya Center in Dallas
• $24K to the Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois
• $232K to the Trust Women Foundation in Wichita, Kansas
• $118K to Whole Women’s Health Alliance, $40K to Whole Women’s Health of Baltimore, over $681K to Whole Women’s Health of Fort Worth, and over $148K to Whole Women’s Health of McAllen, Texas.
• Over $67K to Women’s Health Center of Virginia
• Nearly $200K to FemHealth USA whose public face is the abortion pill chain Carafem, which is a division of the Bill Gates-funded group DKT International, which ships abortion pills internationally.

Hopewell Fund’s 2016 , 2017, 2018, 2019 990 tax filings also reveal financial support for abortion organizations:

• A Capital Women’s Health Clinic
• A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville
• Abortion Access for All
• Allentown Women’s Center
• Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center
• Carolina Abortion Fund
• Center for Reproductive Rights
• Desert Star Family Planning
• Emma Goldman Clinic
• Family Planning Associates Medical Group
• Feminist Women’s Health Center, Inc.
• Gynuity Health Projects (GHP)
• Hope Clinic for Women
• Moms Rising Education Fund
• NARAL Pro-Choice America
• Preterm Cleveland
• Red River Women’s Clinic
• Regents of the University of California San Francisco
• Trust Women Foundation
• Whole Woman’s Health Alliance
• Whole Woman’s Surgical Center

While Live Action News does not know what the outcome of each consumer complaint will be, one thing is clear: shuttering or heavily fining pro-life pregnancy centers which offer women free services would, in essence, guarantee more business for the profitable abortion industry.

The DOJ put a pro-life grandmother in jail for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30-seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP THE DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.