For Immediate Release: The Minnesota Abortion Action Committee (MNAAC) and Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar (TCC4J) will protest outside of the Abria “crisis pregnancy center” at 1pm on Sunday, January 28th at 2232 West Broadway Avenue, Minneapolis. Abria Pregnancy Resources is a crisis pregnancy center (CPC) with one location in North Minneapolis and one in St. Paul. CPCs are facilities that present as real medical clinics, but according to a 2021 study by The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights, these centers are known to make false claims and employ shame tactics to discourage their clients from accessing abortion. In Minnesota, they outnumber real abortion clinics 11 to 1. Some CPCs, like Abria, advertise “material support” for low-income parents, such as diapers and formula, but access to these resources is often contingent on the client undergoing religious-based counseling.
With this protest, organizers in MNAAC and TCC4J aim to make Northside residents aware of Abria’s presence in their neighborhood and spread the word about its harmful tactics. According to TCC4J member Jae Yates, “CPCs often set up shop in areas with populations that are particularly vulnerable to their practices, such as student housing, immigrant neighborhoods, and low-income neighborhoods. Abria’s presence in a primarily Black and Brown community is predatory.” Activists in MNAAC and TCC4J demand the removal of CPCs from the city of Minneapolis, as well as the replacement of those CPCs with unbiased and comprehensive resources for people experiencing unexpected pregnancies.
Activists in MNAAC stress that abortion is a safe procedure with a statistically low incidence of serious complications, and therefore are concerned with how Abria’s website leads readers to believe that abortion has many associated risks. MNAAC member Kristen Bledsoe argues that, “Abria promotes misinformation that abortion is linked to depression and other mental health problems, but meanwhile, their website obscures the dangers and nonviability of ectopic pregnancies, saying only that they ‘can result in serious medical problems,’ and blatantly lying to readers by claiming that they ‘can’t be changed with abortion.’ Abria purports to be a ‘safe, non-judgmental, and supportive’ resource, but the scare tactics they employ are obviously meant to discourage people from accessing their legal right to an abortion.”
With the number of abortion seekers coming to Minnesota from out of state between 2021 and 2022 increasing by 22%, reproductive rights activists stress that expanding abortion care is now more crucial than ever, and that funding for abortion resources must significantly increase to accommodate this influx of patients. In particular, with both mail-order access and in-person access to Mifepristone (the most common medication used for abortions) currently up for debate in the Supreme Court, organizers have focused their efforts on expanding abortion services in Minnesota as much as possible, and ensuring that fake clinics like Abria can’t interfere with a person’s right to access an abortion.