A Crisis Of Deception

As The Threat To Reproductive Care Centers Swells, Another Danger Has Reared Its Ugly Head: Fake Clinics

- Tatsha Robertson

In December 2013 Dartricia Rollins had a hunch that she might be pregnant.

“I went to apply for Medicaid and they gave me a list of places I could go to get a free pregnancy test, because obviously if you don’t have health insurance, you more than likely don’t have a doctor, and more than likely you can’t afford to pay for a blood test,” she says. She was only 22 years old—a freshman majoring in psychology at Atlanta Metropolitan State College.

On the list was a pregnancy services center in Marietta, Georgia, which was located close to her home in the suburbs of Atlanta.

“D’Juan, my boyfriend at the time—he’s my husband now—looked them up online. We didn’t see anything alarming. We called and scheduled an appointment for later that weekend,” she recalls.

Rollins walked into a well-lit facility with staff members in medical scrubs. She provided them with her medical records, her driver’s license, her social security number and a urine sample and was immediately called in to see a counselor to talk about her pregnancy. She was given an ultrasound as well.

Rollins believed the staff who served her, including the person who had conducted her ultrasound, had medical backgrounds. She was likely wrong. She assumed that they were there strictly to provide medical services. She was probably wrong about that too.

FAKE CLINICS