Council Aims To Tighten Rules For Pregnancy Centers

NEW YORK, NY — City Council members are looking to strengthen a law regulating so-called pregnancy service centers, which lawmakers say continue to mislead women seeking abortions and other reproductive health care.

The law targets facilities that offer ultrasounds, sonograms and other prenatal care, or look like a medical facility without actually offering medical tests. It requires the centers to publicly disclose whether they have a licensed medical professional on staff. The Council first passed the law in 2011 but it didn't take effect until May 2016, after a lengthy court battle.

The Department of Consumer Affairs is supposed to inspect these centers for violations of the law. But the DCA didn't start enforcing it until this past fall and has only issued two violations to date, Michael Tiger, the department's general counsel, told the Council's Committee on Consumer Affairs on Wednesday.

DCA inspectors lack the authority to check certain parts of the centers, such as private exam rooms, Tiger said. That makes it tough to determine whether they have the "appearance of a medical facility," as the law defines it and whether they're subject to its rules, DCA officials said.

"We’re going to actively continue to work to see how we can give the law more teeth to allow DCA to do more thorough investigation and enforcement to make sure that women in the future aren’t misled," the committee's chairman, Councilman Rafael Espinal (D-Brooklyn), said in an interview.

The centers, sometimes called crisis pregnancy centers, pose as full-on reproductive health clinics but don't provide abortions and try to talk women out of having them, advocates said Wednesday. They often set up near Planned Parenthood clinics and sometimes trick patients into thinking they're at Planned Parenthood, advocates said.

The Village Voice reported in September that the DCA hadn't issued a single violation since the law took effect. The city's 311 system was also letting complaints about pregnancy service centers fall through the cracks, making it difficult for watchdogs to report them, the story says.

The centers often skirt the disclosure law by posting signs that use misleading language that doesn't clearly inform women that there isn't a licensed doctor on site, advocates said.

As of this week, the DCA has gotten 23 complaints about nine different pregnancy service centers, Tiger said. Its staff has performed 21 inspections and issued two violations, he said. Each violation carries a $2,500 fine.

The centers don't need any license to operate, meaning the city doesn't have a master list of them, Tiger said. The committee will evaluate the possibility of creating a licensing scheme, Espinal said, though it's unclear whether the city has the authority to do so.

DCA is training its inspectors on the pregnancy center law and has its specialized staff investigate complaints, said Casey Adams, a deputy director at the department. Some investigations are still ongoing, he and Tiger said.

"We’re committed to doing everything in our power," Adams said. "That power is defined by the law as it’s written, and so we’re trying to get creative, to work with advocates and to do everything we can within those bounds."

Advocates told horror stories of women's encounters with the pregnancy centers. One woman was told she would "bleed out" and go into a coma if she got an abortion, said Christina Chang, head of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of New York City.

Staff at one center told a woman who didn't speak English well that she was at Planned Parenthood, but told her to leave after discovering she wasn't pregnant, Chang said.

"These anti-aborition facilities do not provide legitimate health services and only make it harder for New Yorkers to access care," Chang told the committe.

Virginia Gallo, a leader of the Queens pregnancy service center Bridge to Life, told the Village Voice that her center doesn't try to talk women out of abortions. The head of another center in the Bronx told the magazine that it's not illegal to open near abortion providers.

"Sometimes a woman with an unplanned pregnancy does not realize she has choices," Gallo told the Voice.

(The lobby of Expectant Mother Care, a pregnancy service center in the South Bronx. Image from Google Maps)