Pennsylvania’s new attorney general shuts down anti-pregnancy center website

(Pregnancy Help News) A victory for pregnancy centers in Pennsylvania has produced hope for pregnancy care workers in the Keystone State.

The commonwealth’s former attorney general Michelle Henry had created a page titled, “Report Reproductive Health Deceptive Activity,” in 2023 on the AG website for clients of pregnancy centers to report complaints.

Local pregnancy help advocates recently discovered that the website has been removed.

The Pennsylvania Pregnancy Wellness Collaborative (PPWC) sent two of its members to the new attorney general’s office April 15 with a mission. David Sunday, openly pro-life, was elected in November as the new AG.

PPWC, as defined in its 2024 opening press conference by the organization’s President Sarah Bowen is an, “initiative unifying pregnancy medical clinics and resource centers that provide compassionate and essential care for women and families in Pennsylvania.”

In 2023, Democrat Henry publicly and falsely stated the website was necessary because most pregnancy centers were not licensed and therefore not providing adequate medical care.

PPWC members Jill Hartman, executive director of A Woman’s Concern in Lancaster, and Jon Merwarth, executive director of Bright Hope Support Centers in Allentown, sat down with the attorney general’s council. Sunday was unable to attend the meeting.

“I believe they really wanted to hear what we had to say,” Hartman said.

Hartman and Merwarth came before the council with statistics refuting the data presented by the previous attorney general office.

Hartman said Henry’s move to depreciate Pennsylvania centers stemmed from the 2022 report by “progressive” collaborative The Alliance titled, “Designed to Deceive: A Study of Crisis Pregnancy Centers in Nine States.” Among those nine states placed under scrutiny was Pennsylvania, along with Alaska, California, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

“That report is what drove much of the false info,” Hartman said.

READ: UK couple won’t let Down syndrome stand in the way of marriage

In the report, researchers incorrectly declared Pennsylvania clinics committed false advertising by using the terms “choice” and “options” in their websites.

The PPWC members addressed these claims with the AG office during the April 15 visit.

Hartman presented the PPWC study, “Optimizing Maternal Health in Pennsylvania” in the visit, highlighting the positive impact of pregnancy help centers.

She shared this document which she drafted in response to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s efforts to start a state-funded pilot pregnancy center.

“There are 87 centers in 161 locations throughout the commonwealth,” Hartman noted in the document. “These centers represent 78 percent of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania with focus on areas with the greatest need.”

“We represent 85 percent of the counties in Pennsylvania,” she said in an interview with Pregnancy Help News.

The site on the attorney general’s page “was set up to convince people to be against us,” Hartman said, adding she is not aware of any complaints registered or investigated from the site’s inception.

She added that PPWC and pregnancy centers in Pennsylvania want what is best for clients as they look for support, saying, “We are wanting data to drive decisions rather than false narratives.”

Hartman said the collaborative is aware there will be folks in the Commonwealth who will choose not to see pregnancy centers as a resource.

“It’s fine if you do not agree with us,” she said. “What’s not fine is that you lie about us.”

Nearly four weeks after the visit with the new AG, a PPWC member went online to review the attorney general website and discovered instead the words, “Oops! That page cannot be found.”

“We are just so pleased,” Hartman said. “We were just coming off from the Day of Advocacy press conference at the capital that week and then we noticed this removal.”

Inquiries by Pregnancy Help News to obtain comment from the Pennsylvania Attorney General Office did not receive a response.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at Pregnancy Help News and is reprinted here with permission.