Improving Accuracy, Transparency and Privacy at
“Everyone deserves privacy and accurate information when it comes to their health. Holding these centers accountable will ensure better health outcomes.” Louise Kaplan, PhD, ARNP, Family Nurse Practitioner. Protect Women’s Health: Support HB 2837 / SB 6452 Legislation Concerning “Limited Service Pregnancy Centers” What are limited service pregnancy centers?: Limited service pregnancy centers offer free pregnancy tests, “pregnancy options counseling,” and ultrasound imaging. They are opposed to abortion. Some call themselves “clinics,” but most provide no medical care other than free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds without medical diagnosis. There are at least 46 such centers operating in Washington State, in 21 counties and 33 legislative districts. What’s the problem? Women go to these centers for medical care and unbiased pregnancy options counseling. Instead, they get false or misleading information about reproductive health care, their medical records are withheld, and they are denied needed referrals for reproductive health care.
Here is just a sampling of the false and misleading information women have received at these centers:
A mother of two reported that a pregnancy center volunteer “told me to wait until I was 12 weeks and see if I miscarry.” A center in Centralia told a woman “if you are 2 ½ weeks late, it [pregnancy] won’t show up on a test. You should wait a few more weeks before coming back.” In Tacoma a pregnancy center volunteer told a woman that “the AIDS virus is so small it goes right through condoms like a grain of rice through a tennis racquet; condoms do not do anything to protect against STDs.”
HB 2837 and SB 6452 protect women’s health by improving accuracy, transparency and privacy at limited service pregnancy centers.
The legislation: · Requires a limited service pregnancy center to disclose to a person seeking services that the center does not provide service or referrals for abortion or comprehensive birth control and that they do not provide medical care for pregnant women. · Requires the centers to protect the privacy of health care information collected from persons seeking services. · Requires limited service pregnancy centers to provide the tested person pregnancy test results immediately. · Protects consumer health by requiring that all reproductive health information provided to consumers be medically accurate. Women facing a possible pregnancy deserve transparency, privacy, and accurate health information.
| 
