Lawmakers seek to regulate faith-based crisis pregnancy centers

The Connecticut legislature is once again seeking to regulate faith-based crisis pregnancy centers, which critics say sometimes pose as medical clinics to lure women and hand out misleading information about abortion.

House Bill 7070 would prohibit anti-abortion centers from engaging in false or deceptive advertising practices. The legislature’s public health committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the measure Monday at 10:30 a.m.

“If a fake clinic opened up right across from an oncology center and tried to lure cancer patients into their location, only to give them medically inaccurate information about cancer treatments to scare people away from treating their cancer with FDA approved treatments, by misrepresenting the side effects or by telling them they will get eternal damnation if they go through treatment, wouldn’t that be strongly condemned?” Alejandra Zaparolli of Farmington said in written testimony filed with the committee. “What these clinics are doing isn’t any different, except it’s with women’s reproductive health.”

But opponents of the proposal say it would violate the First Amendment. Moreover, they say, the bill is not needed because anti-abortion pregnancy centers already make it it clear that they do not provide abortions.

Read more: https://www.courant.com/politics/hc-pol-crisis-pregnancy-general-assembly-20190210-vt7viq46wjd75pftvvcjpqe5wi-story.html