What is the truth about crisis pregnancy centres? The anti-abortion facilities creeping across Britain

Crisis pregnancy centres, which have been known to “misinform” women around abortion, have become increasingly “professionalised” in the UK and are often unregulated, experts have warned.

These centres are commonly run by Christian groups and promise to offer “impartial” and “ethical” advice for free, but some have been found to be promoting “medically inaccurate” information with an anti-abortion agenda which risks leaving women “traumatised”.

Crisis pregnancy centres are often registered charities, and some have received grants from the National Lottery Community Fund and the government. This is in addition to funding from anti-abortion groups, including from within the US, with this expected to grow during Donald Trump’s second presidency.

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It comes as the UK government increases protections for people accessing abortion. MPs approved an amendment to decriminalise abortion further in England and Wales in the Crime and Policing Bill, and the government has also already established safe zones around abortion clinics and hospitals. 

These are 150-meter boundaries where it is a criminal offence to harass or alarm anyone accessing or providing abortion services, or to intentionally influence or obstruct services. 

But experts fear that it could mean anti-abortion campaigners are forced to find more creative ways to spread their agenda – such as funding crisis pregnancy centres.

Louise McCudden, head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, said: “I would be surprised if anti-choice groups just give up and go away and stop harassing women. They’ll find new ways to do it. And I would think that one of the things they will do will be putting more into crisis pregnancy centres.”

Amnesty International UK recently identified 13 crisis pregnancy centres across the country, described as “unregulated centres” which “pretend to offer impartial advice, but actually actively discourage abortion by spreading misinformation and stigma”.

It found that for nine of these 13 centres, spending rose by 46% from £4.4 million to £6.4m between 2019 and 2023.

Amnesty called crisis pregnancy centres “one part of a rapidly growing network of organisations that want to take away the rights of women and LGBTI+ people”.

There are likely far more crisis pregnancy centres in Britain than those identified by Amnesty. Anti-abortion association Heartbeat International has a worldwide directory of ‘pregnancy help’ which lists 179 organisations in the UK.

Many of these are likely to offer ethical and impartial services, are transparent in their Christian ethos and state that they cannot refer for abortion, but some have an anti-abortion stance.

Two centres in the UK – Stanton Healthcare in Belfast and the Good Counsel Network in London – are affiliated with Heartbeat International and are part of its network of more than 2,000 crisis pregnancy centres across the world.

Katherine O’Brien, head of campaigns and communications at the British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS), said: “Crisis pregnancy centres have really become much more professionalised in recent years. I think that’s the American influence on these groups. They are very clever about how they present themselves, hiding their ideological aims. 

“The impact that it can have can be really significant. Women might attend a crisis pregnancy centre thinking they’re going to get impartial advice but actually be left traumatised by the information they receive.”

O’Brien said BPAS has spoken with women who have been told abortion could lead to breast cancer, the development of eating disorders or addiction issues, and that it will impact their ability to love their existing children. It can also “delay women” in having an abortion, “so women who could have received an early medical abortion might then have to have a surgical procedure”.

‘Emphasis on the mental health consequences of an abortion’

The Good Counsel Network claims on its website that “there are many threats to a woman’s future ability to carry a pregnancy to term” following abortion. 

It states that “miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and sterility are often reported following abortions” and that “damage to the cervix, infections and heavy bleeding are common complications”.

These claims are discredited by doctors. The NHS explains that “abortions are generally very safe” and, while there may be complications, as with any medical procedure, this is rare. There is no proven connection between abortion and future infertility, ectopic pregnancy or other pregnancy complications.

Clare McCullough, founder of the Good Counsel Network, responded to the Big Issue’s request for comment by saying: “GoodCounselNetwork.com offers real help, friendship and practical support to expectant mothers facing difficulty. That’s it. That’s what we do.”

The Good Counsel Network also claims that a woman who has had an abortion may cause “post-abortion syndrome”, “suffer from guilt, grieving and mourning, to despair and suicidal impulses, from a desperate need to have a ‘replacement baby’ to abuse of her other children, thwarted maternal instincts and (sometimes multiple) repeat abortions”. 

Post-abortion syndrome is not a recognised medical diagnosis within the NHS or official medical guidelines. Health professionals and pro-choice campaigners argue that it is a syndrome that has been fabricated by anti-abortion groups as a political tactic.

Chiara Capraro, programme director for gender justice at Amnesty International UK, said that crisis pregnancy centres often put “a lot of emphasis on the mental health consequences of having an abortion, with this idea of post-abortion syndrome, which is completely made up”.

McCudden added: “We know that the most common feeling people experience when they have an abortion is relief, and there may be other complicated feelings people feel as well, but it’s generally that they’re glad that they did it, and it’s very rare to regret the decision.”

One woman, who was referred to a crisis pregnancy centre by her GP a number of years ago following two miscarriages, told the Big Issue she felt that the service was “predatory”. It had seemed “professional” in leaflets and the “pro-life” stance of the centre was not immediately clear, but after three counselling sessions, she felt the centre had an “evangelical” agenda.

There was a long waiting list for NHS-funded counselling services and private counselling services can be costly. The woman, who asked not to be named, said that with hindsight she felt it was “unusual” that the service was free, and she worries it may attract vulnerable young women who cannot afford accredited counselling services.

How crisis pregnancy centres are funded

Capraro said funding to crisis pregnancy centres worldwide increased during the first Trump administration and she expects “further growth and reach” during his second presidency.

Amnesty also found some crisis pregnancy centres have received funding from the National Lottery Community Fund and government grants.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport provided grants to crisis pregnancy centres during the pandemic, as part of its Coronavirus Community Fund, distributed by the National Lottery Community Fund.

Big Issue has seen evidence that the National Lottery Community Fund continues to provide funding to crisis pregnancy centres.

A spokesperson for the National Lottery Community Fund said: “We carry out a number of checks on the information supplied to us by groups applying for funding. This is to make sure that the information provided to us is correct, and there are no significant risks evident when awarding grants.

“We will always look into any concerns raised about a project and encourage people to come forward with any concerns they may have by following our ‘raising a concern’ process.”

A further story with more detail around how crisis pregnancy centres are funded will be published on bigissue.com in the coming days.

‘We don’t bring faith into any of the sessions at all’

Big Issue contacted more than a dozen crisis pregnancy centres across the country to ask about their work and received little response. One said that they were “cautious speaking to the press” and refused to speak unless they could approve the article before it was published.

Only one pregnancy centre agreed to speak to the Big Issue about their work: Amber Crisis Pregnancy Care. Big Issue has seen no evidence that this centre is operating unethically or misinforming women.

It operates with a Christian ethos but Alison Stockdale, of Amber Crisis Pregnancy Care, claimed: “We don’t bring faith into any of the sessions at all. Our opinions, our beliefs, are bracketed completely because it’s got to be an ethical place. We’re organisational members of the BACP, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. We function within that framework.”

Amber Crisis Pregnancy Care offers free counselling services to “anyone facing tough decisions about unplanned pregnancy”. It explains on its website that it “cannot refer directly for an abortion” and promises “impartial support”.

Stockdale said: “Originally we didn’t have anything on the website about a Christian foundation, but that felt dishonest. It felt like we should have it somewhere on the website. But the hope is that it doesn’t put people off and that we’ve got enough other credentials and the BACP membership to give people confidence that this is an ethical service.”

Amber Crisis Pregnancy Care also has a few individual BACP members among the team, and Stockdale claims they regularly are all regularly reminded of the “ethical framework within which we function”.

Jo Holmes, safeguarding lead at BACP, recommends that women check if the individual counsellor is a qualified therapist and registered with a professional body such as BACP.

“It has to be about the individual that’s offering the therapy that will adhere to an ethical framework and can’t put their judgments or their opinions, because it’s not what counsellors do,” Holmes said.

She explained that it is “a little easier” to become an organisational member of the BACP than it is to become an individual member.

Organisational membership is open to organisations which offer counselling or psychotherapy to clients; or they may offer training to students or counsellors or have personnel who use counselling skills in their work.

Organisations are asked to disclose anything about an employee which could bring the profession into disrepute, and they have to confirm that any person providing services on behalf of their organisation are aware of and adhere to the ethical framework of BACP.

Holmes added that she is not aware of there ever being a complaint about a pregnancy centre which is an organisational member of the BACP around clients being “misled”.

Holmes has counselled with a faith-based organisation, despite not being a faith-based practitioner herself, and had “no issue”. However, she has heard from women who have had poor experiences.

“I worked with a young person who had a termination,” she said. “They had counselling with a faith-based organisation, and at the end of the counselling, the counsellor said: ‘May I pray for your dead baby?’ That was the end of that. The young person never went back.”

Stockdale said she is aware of the criticisms of crisis pregnancy centres and that it makes her feel “really sad because I know the quality of our help”.

Asked whether Amber Crisis Pregnancy Centre is pro giving women choices, she added: “That’s what we’re there for, to support women, to strengthen women, to be there for them, to give them that safe place, that secure place from which they can make a good decision.”

‘Misinformation and manipulation’

BBC journalist Divya Talwar, who went undercover at crisis pregnancy centres for Panorama in 2023, said: “There were quite a few [centres] that were completely doing what they said on the tin, giving accurate information, basically directing us to the NHS. It was all very impartial. And then we found a proportion that was really concerning.”

Talwar discovered “misinformation and manipulation” at some of these crisis pregnancy centres. She was told that women who had an abortion could bleed to death, that they would never have a baby and that they could get “bogus conditions”.

“Someone like me, as a journalist, was able to absorb that and know that it wasn’t true, but we spoke to women that it had a lasting impact on,” Talwar said. “One of them, she did have the abortion in the end, and she just spiralled from it. They did a scan on her, made her see the babies, even if she didn’t want to. She ended up having serious issues with her mental health and ended up losing all her existing children. They all went into care.”

Talwar added that the tactics used were often “very subtle” and that “in some places, you wouldn’t know that you were being fed misinformation, unless you had a frame of mind where you thought: ‘Let me probe that. Let me question that.’”

Capraro said another sign of a crisis pregnancy centre is “provision of baby clothes and equipment”. “A lot of the rhetoric now, from an abortion perspective, is that women are forced to have abortion because of poverty and cost of living, and if they were helped economically, then they would choose to have that child,” she explained.

Crisis pregnancy centres are not a new phenomenon. Capraro said they started in the US in the 1970s and were subsequently imported to the UK. 

Charity Brook carried out groundbreaking research into crisis pregnancy centres in 2014, finding 135 centres and going undercover at a third of them. Following the report, Care Confidential’s national network linking up and promoting crisis pregnancy centres was dismantled, but the charity fears “little has changed”. Other groups like the Pregnancy Centres Network have formed in its place.

Brook found then that half of crisis pregnancy centres were running sex and relationships education in schools. Big Issue understands that some crisis pregnancy centres are still running workshops in schools with the aim of teaching children about the “impact of unintended pregnancy and to explore the emotions and choices of terminating one”.

There are also concerns about some crisis pregnancy centres going into women’s prisons and accessing an “incredibly vulnerable group of women”, O’Brien said.

Kirsty Kitchen, head of policy at the charity Birth Companions which works to improve the lives of women and babies who experience inequality and disadvantage, said it is “vital that women in prison have access to timely, independent and reliable advice on pregnancy, including advice on abortion”. 

“They have a right to the same standard of information and advice that is available to women in the community, but in reality, it can be difficult to access and to check information while in custody,” she said.

“This is deeply concerning, particularly given the fact that experiences of abuse and sexual violence are prevalent among women in contact with the criminal justice system, and some women only learn they are pregnant when they enter prison.”

O’Brien added: “For places like schools and prisons that are potentially underfunded, they’ve got organisations coming in saying: ‘We’ll come in for free, we’ll deliver this service.’ It’s understandable why they might accept that offer, not really knowing exactly what’s behind these groups.”

‘We think there should be regulation’

Pro-choice campaigners are calling for regulation of crisis pregnancy centres to ensure transparency and that they are not misinforming women or vulnerable groups. They argue that this should be enforced at government level and by the Charity Commission in cases where the centres are registered charities.

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission spokesperson said: “A charity should be a safe and trusted environment. It’s vital that women using pregnancy advice services feel confident that they will be given clear, factual and impartial information on their choices, and that charities inform beneficiaries if religious beliefs inform their approach. We take all concerns raised seriously and encourage anyone concerned about a charity to contact us.”

The commission’s role is focused on trustees and whether they are fulfilling legal duties and responsibilities, and it does not inspect or quality-assure services to beneficiaries. It expects all charities to have processes in place to ensure the services they provide meet appropriate standards.

Mccudden said: “We do think there should be regulation of [crisis pregnancy centres], and certainly there should be greater transparency. At the very least they should have to disclose that they would never refer someone to an abortion service.

“If someone does want to talk to them, that’s fine, but they should know that they’re going to get medically inaccurate information. They should know that they’re getting someone with a very particular agenda.”

There are places people can go to get support around pregnancy, whether that is your GP or another healthcare professional, counsellors registered or accredited with the BCAP, BPAS, Brook, MSI Reproductive Choices, Abortion Talk or a faith group of your choosing.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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