Abstract
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are a worldwide phenomenon typically run by religious organizations who aim to prevent abortion by disseminating misleading and false information about abortion and/or contraception through volunteer-run centers that advertise themselves as medical clinics. CPCs violate basic principles of biomedical ethics through these actions by inhibiting patient autonomy via incomplete disclosure of information, making it impossible for patients to make autonomous decisions about their pregnancy options. This is comparable to not providing risks and benefits before a planned surgical procedure. CPCs also create potentially hazardous medical situations and perpetuate imbalances in social justice, violating other biomedical principles as well. Patients must be allowed to decide what is beneficence for them, including whether the fetus should be considered a patient, invalidating the potential argument that CPCs practice beneficence by preventing abortion. Given these violations, medical professionals cannot ethically support CPCs and should advocate against them given their potential to undermine the doctor-patient relationship.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
The use of the word “client” rather than “patient” is deliberate, as CPC counselors have no health profession credentialing and thus have no claim to the word “patient” in describing those who use their services.
References
American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Pregnancy resource centers. 2010. http://www.aaplog.org/pregnancy-resource-centers/.
APA Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion. Report of the APA task force on mental health and abortion. Washington, DC: Author; 2008.
Beauchamp TL, Childress JF. Principles of biomedical ethics. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2013.
Bryant AG, Levi EE. Abortion misinformation from crisis pregnancy centers in North Carolina. Contraception. 2012;86(6):752–6.
Bryant AG, Narasimhan S, Bryant-Comstock K, Levi EE. Crisis pregnancy center websites: information, misinformation and disinformation. Contraception. 2014;90(6):601–5.
Chervenak FA, Mccullough LB. The fetus as a patient: an essential ethical concept for maternal-fetal medicine. J Matern Fetal Med. 1996;5(3):115–9.
Cunningham FG, Leveno KJ, Bloom SL, Spong CY, Dashe JS, Hoffman BL, Casey B, Sheffield JS. Hypertensive disorders. In: Williams obstetrics. 24th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 2014. p. 736–46.
Entsminger K. Building a successful internet advertising campaign for your pregnancy center. Care Net.
Ganatra B, Gerdts C, Rossier C, Johnson BR, Tunçalp Ö, Assifi A, et al. Global, regional, and subregional classification of abortions by safety, 2010–14: estimates from a Bayesian hierarchical model. Lancet. 2017;390:2372–81.
Jatlaoui TC, et al. Abortion surveillance — United States, 2013. MMWR. 2016;65(SS-12.) https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/ss/ss6512a1.htm.
Kutner J. Crisis pregnancy center tells woman her IUD is “your baby,” plus countless other lies. 2015a. http://www.salon.com/2015/03/18/crisis_pregnancy_center_tells_woman_her_iud_is_your_baby_plus_countless_other_lies/. Retrieved 22 Apr 2016.
Kutner J. How crisis pregnancy centers are using taxpayer dollars to lie to women. Salon. 2015b. http://www.salon.com/2015/07/14/how_crisis_pregnancy_centers_are_using_taxpayer_dollars_to_lie_to_women/.
Life Choices. News. 2015. http://www.lifechoices-agape.org/news. Retrieved 22 Apr 2016.
NARAL Pro-choice North Carolina. The landscape of CPCs. 2017. http://www.prochoicenc.org/assets/bin/landscape-of-cpcs.pdf.
NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. Shady sonograms. 2014. http://txpregnancy.org/shady-sonograms/. Retrieved 22 Apr 2016.
National Abortion Federation (NAF). Crisis pregnancy centers: an affront to choice. 2006. https://www.prochoice.org/pubs_research/publications/downloads/public_policy/cpc_report.pdf.
National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). Crisis pregnancy centers are targeting women of color, endangering their health. 2012. https://nwlc.org/resources/crisis-pregnancy-centers-are-targeting-women-color-endangering-their-health.
Opotowsky AR, Siddiqi OK, D’Souza B, et al. Maternal cardiovascular events during childbirth among women with congenital heart disease. Heart. 2012;98:145.
Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, H.R. 36, 115th Cong. (2017).
Patel J. with life choices in San Antonio TX, audio recording, May 22nd, 2015.
Raymond EG, Grimes DA. The comparative safety of legal induced abortion and childbirth in the United States. Obstet Gynecol. 2012;119(2, Part 1):215–9.
Reproductive FACT Act, Cal. Assemb. B. 775 (2015-2016), Chapter 700 (Cal. Stat. 2015).
Rewire Staff. 20-Week Bans. 2017. https://rewire.news/legislative-tracker/law-topic/20-week-bans/. Retrieved 6 Nov 2017.
Stacey, D. The pregnancy center movement: history of crisis pregnancy centers. www.motherjones.com/files/cpchistory2.pdf.
Zhang S, Cardarelli K, Shim R, Ye J, Booker KL, Rust G. Racial disparities in economic and clinical outcomes of pregnancy among Medicaid recipients. Matern Child Health J. 2012;17(8):1518–25.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
McLeod, C. (2018). The Ethics of Evangelism: Why You Can’t Be a Good Physician and Support Crisis Pregnancy Centers. In: Campo-Engelstein, L., Burcher, P. (eds) Reproductive Ethics II. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89429-4_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89429-4_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89428-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89429-4
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)