Woman Sues Anti-Abortion 'Pregnancy Center' After Her Ectopic Pregnancy Ruptured

left: sandwich sign is outside Problem Pregnancy, a crisis pregnancy center, on Pleasant Street in Worcester, MA. It is located near a Planned Parenthood clinic. Right: an ambulance with its lights flashing.

A Massachusetts woman claims that an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center failed to diagnose her ectopic pregnancy during an ultrasound appointment and that the pregnancy later ruptured, requiring emergency surgery to remove one of her fallopian tubes. Ectopic pregnancies are never viable and can be life-threatening; the pregnancy should have been terminated immediately.

The woman, known as Jane Doe, filed a class action lawsuit on Thursday in Worcester Superior Court alleging that Clearway Clinic in Worcester didn’t follow standard medical care. The suit also claims that Clearway engages in deceptive practices to lure in people seeking the full range of pregnancy options, when its actual purpose is just to dissuade them from getting abortions.

Crisis pregnancy centers, or anti-abortion centers, already receive millions in state funds, and many lawmakers are trying to increase funding after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Many CPCs don’t employ medical professionals, but still have their staff perform dubious ultrasounds. They’ve also been known to mislead people by saying their pregnancies are less far along than they really are so they run out of time to get an abortion. CPCs using non-medical staff aren’t bound by the medical privacy law HIPAA. While this particular facility appears to have employed healthcare workers, they didn’t adhere to medical standards.

The woman’s attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, called Clearway’s actions “not only illegal, but abhorrent” in a statement. “Our client was forced to undergo a traumatic, dangerous, and completely avoidable emergency surgery to save her life because she was deceived into going to an anti-abortion clinic instead of an appropriate healthcare provider,” Liss-Riordan said. “At every step of the way, she was led to believe she was receiving appropriate medical care when in fact she was subject to a campaign of misinformation and unfair and deceptive practices.”

The Massachusetts-based group Reproductive Equity Now said anti-abortion centers outnumber real abortion clinics in the state by three to one. That figure is about the same nationally, but the ratio is often higher in Republican-controlled states.

Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said in a statement that the case proves that anti-abortion centers harm not only people seeking abortions but also people who need basic pregnancy care. “These facilities fail to offer safe or legitimate health services, putting patients at serious risk,” she said. “When a person is seeking compassionate abortion or pregnancy care, the last thing they should have to worry about is a false health diagnosis that delays or stands in the way of life-saving treatment.”

Since the lawsuit is a class action, other people who believe Clearway deceived or mistreated them can join the litigation.