CREW Posts HHS Documents Related to Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers; Documents Sent in Response to CREW FOIA

20 Feb 2007 // The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has provided documents in answer to a lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW sued HHS over its failure to provide documents related to the details of its policy of using federal funds to support pregnancy resource centers, some of which have been found to provide false and misleading information to pregnant teenagers seeking their services. CREW originally filed a FOIA request for those documents on August 4, 2006; that request can be viewed below.

On October 27, 2006, CREW sued HHS for failing to fulfill its request. On February 5, 2007, in response to CREW's lawsuit and underlying FOIA, CREW received approximately 3343 pages of documents from two components of HHS – the Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). These documents represent briefing documents, grant applications and related documents pertaining to pregnancy resource centers.

In July 2006, Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) released a report based on his request that the U.S. House of Representatives’ Special Investigations Division conduct an investigation into whether the information provided to pregnant women and teens by federally funded pregnancy resource centers is scientifically accurate. According to the report, pregnancy resource centers were created in 2002, and are a component of the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiative program. For the purposes of this report, female investigators focused on the 25 pregnancy resource centers that have received grants from the Compassion Capital Fund. Posing as pregnant 17-year-olds trying to have an abortion, the investigators successfully telephoned 23 of the 25 centers and requested information and advice regarding unintended pregnancy. Out of the 23 pregnancy resource centers that were successfully contacted, 20 provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion. Some of them also misrepresented the medical risks of abortion by informing callers that abortion could increase the risks of breast cancer, sterility and suicide.