Legal Momentum Goes Inside Dr. Keroack's Fake Abortion Clinic

Legal Momentum sent a pregnant volunteer to see what really takes place inside a fake abortion clinic founded and run by Dr. Eric Keroack until he was recently appointed to head the federal family planning program.

Keroack's crisis pregnancy center used dubious, misleading and medically irresponsible tactics to try to dissuade our volunteer from having an abortion. The results of this investigation give new urgency to the need for Keroack to resign as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs.

What is a Crisis Pregnancy Center?

"Crisis pregnancy centers" (CPC's) falsely give the impression that they are actual abortion clinics providing pregnancy counseling and medical care. In fact these clinics provide no abortion services or even any contraception. Visits to fake clinics cause unnecessary delay for women who seek abortion services, and may result in later-term abortion.

Many such clinics receive hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal funding each year despite intense criticism and Congressional investigations that have revealed the centers' deceitful tactics. Dr. Keroack's A Woman's Concern has received almost $1.5 million in federal grants to develop and promote abstinence-only programs. Nationwide more than $130 million in abstinence-only funding has gone to similar anti-abortion centers.


Did A Woman's Concern Give Honest Information?

A Woman's Concern promotes itself to pregnant women considering abortion as a "pregnancy health center designed just for you." Nowhere does the center reveal that its real mission is to dissuade women from abortion.

The center staff told our volunteer misinformation and lies about abortion. Counselors provided gruesome exaggerated details of an abortion procedure - including a description of "prying" open her cervix to get the "bigger baby out" because her pregnancy was past the first trimester. Our volunteer was also told gross exaggerations about the risks associated with RU-486 (the abortion pill), including hemorrhaging and ineffectiveness.

Counselors further made false assertions about the mental health effects of abortion -including telling our volunteer that she would likely have severe depression as a result of her abortion and that this was a common occurrence. Such assertions about "post-abortion syndrome" are not supported by the weight of scientific evidence, nor recognized by major psychiatric associations.

A Woman's Concern also provided our volunteer with pamphlets containing information falsely linking abortion to a risk of breast cancer. This long-time anti-abortion myth has been repeatedly discredited. Other pamphlets in the center's waiting room likewise contained disinformation about condoms and sexually transmitted infections, and were often seriously outdated.

A Woman's Concern adopts an air of medical authority but in actuality it fails to provide accurate information or legitimate medical services of use to any woman.


But Aren't There Laws that Prohibit Practicing Medicine Like This?

The center's use of ultrasound technology is medically irresponsible and violates accepted medical practice.

The Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") and the major professional medical associations all agree that fetal ultrasound is only appropriate when used to obtain "diagnostic information." Indeed, the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine has warned that "nondiagnostic fetal imaging without medical indication is inappropriate, medically irresponsible, and potentially unsafe."

A Woman's Concern uses ultrasound simply to advance its own anti-abortion beliefs. The center staff specifically informed our volunteer that the ultrasound they performed on her could not be considered a diagnostic ultrasound. Our volunteer's ultrasound examination lasted almost thirty minutes and included a detailed description claiming to identify the heart, arms and legs, ribs and brain of our volunteer's "baby." Our volunteer was sent home with a printed image of the fetus.

The use of ultrasound is a hallmark of Dr. Keroack's anti-abortion work. Dr. Keroack views all women who enter his center as being "at-risk" for deciding to have an abortion and "abortion-vulnerable." To Dr. Keroack the medically inappropriate use of ultrasound is justified simply because he believes it may convince a woman not to have an abortion.


How Can We Stop Dr. Keroack?

Since his federal appointment has put him under scrutiny, Dr. Keroack has back-pedaled away from his centers' deceitful tactics and his own opposition to all contraception. Yet Dr. Keroack has a long track record of being anti-abortion, and anti-contraception (even for married women) and passionate about extreme abstinence-only programs. Clearly the practices our volunteer experienced at A Woman's Concern make Dr. Keroack an inappropriate and unqualified choice to control the federal family planning services.

The deceit and misinformation practiced against women by crisis pregnancy centers such as A Woman's Concern is an affront to all women.