Between 12 and 20% of women with a history of pregnancy or testing for pregnancy visited crisis pregnancy centers across four U.S. states, according to a new study by Maria Gallo and colleagues from The Ohio State University, U.S., published June 4, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One.
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) typically provide pregnancy and parenting resources and associate with organizations which promote missions focused on preventing abortion, opposing contraception, and advocating for abstinence outside of marriage. They are typically not medically licensed clinics, though they can be perceived as medical facilities or abortion clinics, and often provide inaccurate or misleading information about sexual and reproductive health. There is limited evidence on how many women use such centers.
In this study, researchers used data for 2018 to 2020 from Surveys of Women, a population-representative survey of adult women in four U.S. states (Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Jersey). The data comprised nearly 9,000 women.
Of the women who reported ever being pregnant or ever having tested for pregnancy and thus might have had a reason to attend a CPC, 11.6% to 20.2% reported visiting a CPC for pregnancy-related care. Attendance was highest in Arizona at 20.2% and lowest in New Jersey at 11.6%. The other two states represented, Wisconsin and Iowa, each had attendance rates of approximately 14%. The study found no correlation between CPC attendance and age, race/ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.
The results serve as an important pre-Dobbs measurement of CPC attendance that will be key to understanding their role in pregnancy-related health as the reproductive healthcare landscape shifts.
The authors add: "Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are unlicensed facilities that often pose as medical clinics to target pregnant people. The centers are increasingly supported with public funding in the U.S. Because the centers do not have to follow medical and safety standards, people should not turn to them for medical care."
"We surveyed a representative group of adult, reproductive-age women in four states. We found that attending a CPC in each of the states was not rare. Attendance among all women ranged from one in 11 women in New Jersey to one in six women in Arizona."
"Previous studies have shown that CPCs spread inaccurate health information. This new work shows that attending these centers is not rare. Given these findings, providers should be aware that their pregnant patients might have previously attended a CPC and might have been exposed to misinformation that needs to be corrected."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/43bV0za
Citation: Yang TJ, Smith MH, Kavanaugh ML, Ricks JM, Gallo MF (2025) Prevalence of crisis pregnancy center attendance among women in four U.S. states. PLoS One 20(6): e0324228. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324228
Author countries: U.S.
Funding: Funding for this project was provided anonymously and the funding organization had no role or involvement in study design, data collection, data analysis, writing, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
