Philadelphia City Council approves resolution recognizing abortion rights as human rights

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In states where abortion is legal, at least 34 clinics have closed in the past two years, citing financial and operational struggles. In September, an appeals court allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to block Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, putting an estimated 200 health centers at risk of closing, according to the organization.

To fill in the funding gaps, states and cities nationwide have been stepping up financially to support abortion access.

Following the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Philadelphia granted $500,000 to the Abortion Liberation Fund of PA, a nonprofit focused on protecting and expanding abortion rights in Philly and surrounding counties. Since then, the city has designated at least half a million dollars to reproductive health.

In September 2024, the city gave $500,000 directly to Planned Parenthood, in addition to spending $450,000 in funding to address other reproductive health care rights in the city. However, when Mayor Cherelle Parker’s budget was approved in June, that funding number dropped to zero.

Councilmember Kendra Brooks criticized the city’s decision to cut the funding at a time when women’s health care rights and access are under attack in the country. Brooks serves as chair of Philadelphia’s Reproductive Freedom Task Force, a new team established in 2024.

“In our most recent budget no money was put towards reproductive care, which is definitely problematic,” Brooks said. “Especially when other cities like Chicago, Atlanta and Baltimore are stepping up with direct city funding for abortion and reproductive care, but here in Philly we can’t even get a hearing.”

At Thursday’s City Council meeting, Brooks introduced a resolution that was approved to recognize abortion rights as human rights. Members of the Reproductive Freedom Task Force and advocates offered public comments and advocated for a hearing with the Committee on Public Health about the state of reproductive health in Philadelphia.

Katia Pérez, executive director of the Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania, spoke in support of the resolution. She explained that while the city authorized a public hearing on reproductive health in Philadelphia in September, a meeting has yet to be scheduled.

“Protecting abortion access and reproductive health care isn’t a federal issue, it’s everyone’s issue,” Pérez said.

In September, Planned Parenthood paid $45 million to cover Medicaid patients’ expenses. The organization said this spending is not sustainable. Brooks said she hasn’t heard about any clinics being forced to shut down due to financial restraints, but “there’s always a chance when there’s no funding.”

With the city’s decision not to provide funding to reproductive health care and potential clinic closures, advocates at City Council warned that there is another threat to women seeking reproductive care: crisis pregnancy centers.

Masquerading as health centers, abortion rights advocates said that these “fake clinics” pose a threat to women seeking reproductive health care, and without financial support from the city, legitimate medical providers could be left in a precarious situation.

What are crisis pregnancy centers?

Crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, have been around for almost 60 years, with the first established in 1967 in Hawaii following the state’s legalization of abortion. The first record of a center in Philadelphia appeared in the late 1970s, called the Abortion, Birth Control and Pregnancy Testing Clinic.

Today, there are 2,633 crisis pregnancy centers in the United States, including 154 in Pennsylvania, the third highest in the country. Nationally, CPCs outnumber abortion providers 3-to-1. In Pennsylvania, CPCs outnumber abortion providers 9-to-1.

The objective of a crisis pregnancy center is simple — persuade a woman who comes in not to get an abortion. Across the country, centers have received hundreds of millions of dollars in private, state and federal funding to do so.

To achieve this goal, CPCs will often hide their beliefs, appearing to the public as just another abortion clinic. Dr. Scott Sullivan, an officer of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said these centers trick women seeking abortion care.

“A lot of patients go to these centers thinking that they are either affiliated with the hospital or a clinic or a health department, because in a lot of cases they’re indistinguishable from health care [providers],” Sullivan said. “They’re very focused on their goals of talking people out of abortions or contraception and pushing a particular point of view rather than offering all the options.”

In addition to misleading and deceptive websites, these centers will often place themselves in close proximity to real abortion providers. Community Women’s Center is located at 1202 Locust St., less than a hundred feet away from The Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center, Planned Parenthood’s only location that provides abortion services in the city. AlphaCare, another CPC, is a seven-minute walk from PEACE, a Penn Medicine abortion clinic.

Expanding services and unregulated treatments

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, crisis pregnancy centers around the country started looking to expand their medical services and become more all-encompassing clinics. AlphaCare, one of the centers in West Philadelphia, is following this national trend.

AlphaCare’s executive director Brooke Nearman said the pregnancy center has expanded its services in the past, adding nurses trained to read ultrasounds and a radiologist in 2016. Over the past year, they’ve gotten more serious about expanding their “medical footprint” in the city.

The CPC has had conversations with a health clinic about the potential of having their physicians work at AlphaCare satellite sites, adding the option of both prenatal and postpartum care.

“We really just want to see women thrive here and get into appropriate care with us, and then elsewhere as soon as possible,” Nearman said. “I think we really are able to serve as a grassroots tool within the continuum of care here in Philadelphia.”

According to AlphaCare’s website, they offer services like pregnancy testing and ultrasounds, standard care found in women’s health care clinics. Other pregnancy centers, including two in the Philadelphia area — offer much more radical treatment, what they call “abortion pill reversal.” According to the Options For Her website, a CPC in Cherry Hill, the treatment is “safe and effective.”

“All relevant medical associations, like [the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists], warn that this is not a legitimate practice,” said Tara Murtha, Director of Impact and Engagement at Women’s Law Project. “It’s considered medical experimentation.”

The reversal pill came to light in a 2012 study, unsupervised by an institutional review board, that claimed four out of six women who took progesterone doses after taking mifepristone were able to carry on their pregnancies. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “this is not scientific evidence that progesterone resulted in the continuation of those pregnancies.”

When a study was conducted in 2020 to review the validity of the experimental treatment, tests were ended early to protect participant safety.

“There is an element of danger there since this is not something that has fully been evaluated,” Sullivan said. “So I do have concerns about this treatment because it seems to be on the fringe of medical care.”

In addition to providing patients with a treatment not backed by research, CPCs for the most part do not have a full range of services, according to Sullivan. The OB-GYN said that even the partial offerings are misleading — if they have ultrasounds, they may not be diagnostic, or they may not offer bloodwork.

“I would counsel patients to avoid crisis pregnancy centers,” Sullivan said. “They typically give a very one-sided, slanted and majority of the time, frankly, misleading range of options and counseling.”