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Pregnancy Choices Directory: Anti-abortion database goes offline after our investigation [1]
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Date: 2023-08
A shadowy database directing pregnant people to anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centres” has been shut down following an openDemocracy investigation.
We revealed earlier this month that the ‘Pregnancy Choices Directory’ website appeared to be a rebranded version of Care Confidential – a charity that wound itself up following a scandal nine years ago. The site included a list of 23 CPCs across Britain. Similar centres have been found to be little more than a front for religious groups trying to talk people out of having abortions, sometimes using misinformation.
As well as the links between the Pregnancy Choices Directory and Care Confidential, openDemocracy found a number of local council and NHS websites were signposting other “crisis pregnancy centres” linked to the organisation.
Tameside, Torbay and Peterborough councils, along with the Cambridge University Hospitals and Knowledge Anglia NHS websites, have now deleted their references to the Pregnancy Choices Directory altogether after being approached for comment by openDemocracy.
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Laura Hurley of the Safe Abortion Access Fund said: “In an ideal world, these medical establishments would not have needed an exposé like this to assess the quality of the services they are signposting to. We would hope to see all NHS services signposting only to evidence-based and balanced pregnancy support services.”
A 2014 report found some CPCs affiliated with Care Confidential had been posing as neutral health facilities and concealing their religious standpoints, while spreading misinformation in order to talk vulnerable pregnant people out of having abortions.
The charity ceased all operations the following year, removing itself from the charity register.
One of the report’s authors, Lisa Hallgarten – head of policy and public affairs at the sexual and reproductive health charity Brook – told us she was “pleased” that the Pregnancy Choices Directory website had removed its database of CPCs.
Louise McCudden of MSI Reproductive Choices – previously Marie Stopes – said it was “good that the NHS has taken action after being made aware of this”. But, she added, openDemocracy’s investigation raised questions about “how such a trusted body ever signposted to organisations who so clearly have an anti-abortion agenda”.
A number of CPCs listed on the Pregnancy Choices Directory claimed to offer “unplanned pregnancy support” but explicitly said they could not refer clients for abortions and made reference to their religious ethos. At least one boasted of an education programme for schools at which subjects such as foetal developmental stages are juxtaposed with abortion law – a tactic that has been criticised in the past for trying to shock students into opposing abortion.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/local-councils-nhs-crisis-pregnancy-anti-abortion/
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