MEXICO CITY — An unplanned, unwanted pregnancy fills a woman’s mind with one question: Should she terminate or continue the pregnancy?
Sexual and reproductive rights are human rights, and abortion is legal in some countries. Yet some women who decide to assert their right to terminate a pregnancy continue to face criminalization, and even death when abortions are performed in unsafe conditions. Many women who decide to terminate their pregnancy search the internet looking for options. With just one click, they can find verified and reliable information, but also a whole lot of misleading content.
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Operating on that thin line between providing verified information and misleading content is one of the world’s largest anti-rights networks: Heartbeat International. According to its website, this non-profit Christian organization was created in Columbus, Ohio, in 1971 to fight against the legalization of abortion, following the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s when this conservative community opposed to abortion created hotlines to “guide” pregnant women.
Later these hotlines mutated into crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), pregnancy resource centers or medical clinics offering distorted information about the consequences of abortion.
This initiative of anti-abortion hotlines and centers was known as Alternatives to Abortion International (AAI). In 1993, when AAI had already reached around 200 affiliated centers in the United States, it changed its name to Heartbeat International (HBI). Yet according to the specialized think tank Pro-Lies.org, the organization still uses the name AAI in several U.S. states to refer to their taxpayer-funded anti-abortion programs.
HBI now has more than 3,250 affiliated centers in 89 countries around the world, including 288 in Latin America, according to their 2022 annual report.
Friends in Washington
To understand the organization’s growth, it is important to understand how strong the anti-abortion movement is in the United States. Although in recent decades the North American country has experienced a sustained growth of people who do not declare themselves religious, the U.S. remains a largely Christian and, to a large extent, conservative nation.
HBI finds most of its political support exactly where one would expect: the Republican Party.
It’s not only a large movement: it’s also a powerful one, with important political backing. In 2018, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority gave a boost to the anti-abortion movement by declaring as “probably unconstitutional” a California law that required anti-abortion organizations to provide information about state-funded pregnancy termination procedures.
With this, the court’s conservative justices agreed that women who consulted these organizations or the centers they ran did not have a right to access critical and impartial information about their options.
HBI finds most of its political support exactly where one would expect: in the Republican Party. Former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, often spoke at HBI events held on Capitol Hill.
In 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, HBI encouraged anti-abortion clinics to cash on the political momentum and reach out to their “friends in Washington” to apply for federal funds.
That is another important factor to understand the growth of the organization: HBI functions as a fundraising organization that then disburses money to other anti-abortion centers and organizations around the world. According to analysis of HBI’s annual filings by openDemocracy, between 2007 and 2019, the organization spent nearly million in grants to at least a dozen other anti-abortion groups and networks.
And partners in Latin America
Beyond the funding, HBI helps many of these groups with training, legal advice and organizational development — as will be explained later — which gives the organization significant soft power: HBI has nearly 3,250 affiliated centers, including more than 1,200 outside the US. That means that the organization’s network includes more than 46% of the anti-abortion centers around the world, according to 2022 HBI data. In Latin America, HBI’s great allies are the crisis pregnancy centers, called centros de ayuda para mujeres (CAM) in Spanish.
The CAM network dates back to 1989, when its founder, Jorge Serrano Limón, who was already president of the Mexican anti-abortion group National Pro-Life Committee, attended a conference organized by Human Life International in New Orleans. There, he met Laura Nelson, a CPC founder in Chicago, and was so impressed with her testimony that he decided to contact her to learn how to replicate the crisis pregnancy center project in Mexico.
On August 15, 1989, the first CAM opened its doors in Mexico City. Data on how many CAMs operate in Latin America is rather uncertain.
When you try to contact the centers by telephone, an automated voice states that the number can’t be reached.
The CAM website states that currently, without giving a specific date, there are more than 70 CAMs in Mexico and more than 130 in the rest of Latin America, including 40 in Argentina, without adding much information about such centers. Meanwhile, the Worldwide Directory of Pregnancy Help, available on the HBI website, states that in Mexico there are 160 such centers, including CAMs and others such as VIFAC, Save a Life and Pregnancy Shelter Service.
In Argentina, the directory states that there are 53 CAMs (known as La Merced Vida, or Mercy Life) and in El Salvador two, located in Santa Tecla. It’s not easy getting in touch with them: When you try to contact the centers by telephone, an automated voice states that the number can’t be reached.
So how do distressed women, looking for advice on their pregnancies, reach out to these centers?
“To teach and rescue”
As reported in other investigations, HBI’s method is to attract pregnant women through false, targeted advertisements on the internet, mainly on social networks. Their ads are designed to draw the attention of women seeking to terminate their pregnancies, provide them with misleading and inaccurate information about the consequences of the procedure, and ultimately convince them not to abort, a choice for which they even offer financial and adoption support.
Taking advantage of women who are scared and looking for information is something that HBI boasts about with pride on its website, where it highlights that thanks to its methods “300,000 mothers chose life.”
As mentioned before, HBI offers affiliated centers its guidance, but above all legal education and training – providing educational material full of false information about the procedures and consequences of abortion – to consolidate its mission: “to reach and rescue as many lives as possible.”
For any and all purposes
These services are not free. Those who start a center and join HBI receive benefits, which can be free or with discount prices, to access the different resources that HBI makes available: information about abortion, telephone or email consultations, training, conferences, newsletters, etc.
One of these services, the so-called Option Line, is a potential privacy infringement.
And perhaps the most important skill of all: training courses including social media strategies, Google Ad Grants, and search engine marketing. According to 2019 report “How anti-abortion activism is exploiting data” by the British organization Privacy International, one of these services, The so-called Option Line, is a potential privacy infringement.
The Option Line Web service is a chat and a helpline for women with unexpected pregnancies, powered through LiveChat software. Before starting the chat, visitors are required to enter personal details such as name, location, as well as what information you are searching for.
It is unknown where the data sent before the start of the chat and during the conversation ends up and who has access to it. The terms of use state that “all feedback submitted through the website, other than information directly requested, may be used by Option Line for any and all purposes it deems appropriate to its mission and vision.”
“In countries where there is strong opposition to reproductive freedom, as well as limited data privacy laws” emphasizes the Privacy International report, “there is a significant risk that people’s data will be exploited in an attempt to restrict their reproductive rights.”
