Regulation
Federal spotlight on Crisis Pregnancy Centers sharpens regulatory divide
By Insurance Wire Staff, . Insurance Wire.
The Trump administration's decision to feature a Crisis Pregnancy Center locator on the newly launched moms.gov federal website has put these facilities back at the center of a policy debate that has direct implications for health coverage, liability and state regulatory frameworks. A KFF brief published in 2026 lays out the legal and operational landscape in detail.
According to KFF, citing a U.S. Government Accountability Office figure from 2025, somewhere between 2,400 and 2,800 Crisis Pregnancy Centers were operating nationally, with most affiliated with one of three anti-abortion organizations: Heartbeat International, the National Institute for Family and Life Advocates, and Care Net. KFF notes that membership figures across those three organizations overlap and may include maternity homes, adoption agencies and what the organizations call abortion recovery programs, so the true affiliate count exceeds the GAO's operating estimate.
The brief is direct about what these centers are and are not. The vast majority are not licensed medical facilities. Many lack a credentialed physician or registered nurse on staff, and those that do employ clinicians often do so on a part-time or volunteer basis. In 2024, KFF reports, more than 71 percent of centers nationwide offered nondiagnostic ultrasounds, 28 percent advertised sexually transmitted infection testing, and 6 percent advertised HIV testing. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as quoted by KFF, has stated that centers "undermine the tenets of informed consent and patient autonomy" through deception, delay tactics and disinformation.
The liability exposure embedded in that model is already producing litigation. KFF describes a class-action lawsuit filed in Massachusetts against Clearway Clinic after the center failed to diagnose a patient's ectopic pregnancy. Massachusetts responded by enacting a law requiring that pregnancy-related ultrasounds be performed only under the supervision of a licensed health care provider. Washington and Connecticut have passed similar supervision requirements. Four states, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oregon, go further and require an imaging license to perform ultrasounds at all.
Enforcement, however, is a different matter. KFF reports that North Dakota's own licensing board has acknowledged it has no jurisdiction over unlicensed individuals, and New Hampshire has not pursued action against unlicensed volunteers performing ultrasounds at CPCs, leaving the matter to criminal prosecutors who have not acted. California sits at the opposite end of the spectrum: KFF notes the state attorney general has deployed subpoena power and cease-and-desist authority against centers for violations of state law, though the brief's available text stops short of identifying which statute.
The gap between licensing requirements on paper and enforcement in practice is the central operational risk here. For insurers writing professional liability, medical malpractice or general liability coverage for facilities that offer clinical-adjacent services, the question of whether a center qualifies as a medical provider under state law is not settled uniformly. A center that performs ultrasounds in a state with a supervision requirement but no enforcement mechanism occupies ambiguous ground, and a claim arising from a missed ectopic pregnancy diagnosis could test whether standard exclusions apply.
The federal dimension adds a layer that did not exist before. By placing a CPC locator alongside Federally Qualified Health Centers on a government website, the administration is implicitly positioning these centers within the health services infrastructure, even though, as KFF makes clear, they are not subject to the same licensing, staffing or scope-of-practice requirements. Whether that positioning eventually translates into federal funding streams, and what compliance conditions might attach to them, is not yet established by the reporting.
What is clear from KFF's account is that the post-Dobbs environment has increased foot traffic at some centers, particularly in Southern states where abortion access is restricted and where hospital obstetric units have been closing. The 7B Care Clinic on the Idaho-Washington border, cited by KFF, attempted to expand into prenatal services after a local hospital closed its labor and delivery unit, but the effort collapsed when prospective clinicians declined to sign a values pledge the center required. That episode illustrates the structural ceiling on what these centers can realistically deliver, regardless of how they are promoted.
Professionals working in health plan distribution, Medicaid managed care, or liability lines covering reproductive health adjacent facilities should watch how state attorneys general respond to the federal promotion, whether Congress attaches funding to CPC expansion, and whether the Massachusetts and Washington ultrasound supervision models spread to other states.
Source: https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/the-legal-and-policy-landscape-of-crisis-pregnancy-centers/
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