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ABSTRACT: Crisis pregnancy centers are largely religiously affiliated organizations that advertise pregnancy support but often do not provide full and accurate information about abortion or contraception. Often attacked for false advertising and operating without medical licenses, crisis pregnancy centers recently have begun converting to medical centers with medical staffon site. Since medical providers owe additional duties to their patients, crisis pregnancy centers operated by medical staffmust follow additional procedures, such as providing informed consent. Informed consent doctrine is based on the idea of autonomous decision-making and requires medical providers to accurately inform patients of their viable medical options. Even though crisis pregnancy centers often fail to inform people about critical reproductive health care, people who visit crisis pregnancy centers still would have difficulty bringing a claim of informed consent against these centers. Applying informed consent doctrine to crisis pregnancy centers highlights the discrepancy between the philosophical purpose of informed consent and the doctrine in practice today. Courts should loosen the causation and injury requirements for informed consent doctrine, at least in reproductive health care cases. Making this change would be the first step in holding crisis pregnancy centers accountable and could help courts more accurately apply reproductive-specific tort claims generally.
[T]he doctrine of informed consent, if it is to enhance patients' participation in decision-making, must confront the question: Who decides?1
I. INTRODUCTION
At Informed Choices Medical Clinic in Iowa City, Iowa, a person can consult on general reproductive health care with a medical provider.2 However, the consultation will generally exclude full and complete information about abortion procedures or contraception.3 This clinic is not unique; over 2,500 centers that claim to be specifically dedicated to reproductive health across the United States fail to provide information about basic reproductive health care procedures.4 These centers, often called crisis pregnancy centers,5 are generally nonprofit religious organizations whose mission is to convince people6 to carry their pregnancies to term.7 While the practices at these centers impact any person who visits a crisis pregnancy center, they disproportionately impact low-income women, women of color, and LGBTQIA+ and non-gender conforming people.8 Crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics three-to-one (or more), and many people live in a county without access to all reproductive medical services.9
When operated by non-medical providers, crisis pregnancy centers...