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University Health Center Directs Loyola Students to Fake Clinics

"As a student who relies on the Wellness Center for health care, it makes me furious that they’re not providing medically accurate information," Melissa Haggerty, 21, told Rewire.

With about 16,000 students, Loyola is a Jesuit Catholic institution. According to its website, it follows Catholic doctrine that opposes most forms of reproductive health care—including abortion—but also promotes the highest ethical behavior. Loyola University Chicago / YouTube

The student health center at Loyola University in Chicago is repeatedly directing students to crisis pregnancy centers, or fake clinics, despite an outcry from campus activists.

The Wellness Center, as the university health center is known, initially posted a link on its website under the “pregnancy services” section to a chain of fake clinics called Aid for Women, according to Melissa Haggerty, a Loyola undergrad and organizer with Students for Reproductive Justice. Haggerty told Rewire the group discovered the link in July and met about a week ago with the director of the Wellness Center, who agreed to remove the link.

On Friday, Haggerty said they discovered the Wellness Center had posted a new link to a different fake clinic, the Women’s Center.

“As a student who relies on the Wellness Center for health care, it makes me furious that they’re not providing medically accurate information,” Haggerty, 21, told Rewire.

Representatives from the university and Wellness Center did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

The Wellness Center offers students free pregnancy tests and limited reproductive health services, but not birth control, according to the center’s fee schedule. In addition to the link to the fake clinic, its “pregnancy services” page includes contact information for the Loyola Students for Life campus group and for an off-campus provider of adoption services.

Like most fake clinics, the Women’s Center offers free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, and employs scare tactics to discourage those seeking abortion care. Its website features a laundry list of physical side effects, with no context, to make abortion care appear dangerous. Abortion care is safer than childbirth or even getting a wisdom tooth removed.

The website also lists “emotional” side effects, such as depression, anxiety, guilt, suicidal thoughts, unresolved grief, and sense of loss. Major research reports from the American Psychological Association, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges found few, if any, psychological differences between those who gave birth or ended their pregnancies.

Dr. Jessica Shepherd, assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Medicine, told the local news site DNAinfo that she had “a lot of problems” with the Women’s Center’s website.

“There’s no clinical references behind it,” she said, referring to the information the fake clinic provided. “I don’t like it, I would never endorse it.”

The fake clinic that the Wellness Center reportedly initially directed students to, Aid for Women, is Catholic-run and operates six fake clinics in the area that “are on the front line of the abortion battle,” according to its website.

With about 16,000 students, Loyola is a Jesuit Catholic institution. According to its website, it follows Catholic doctrine that opposes most forms of reproductive health care—including abortion—but also promotes the highest ethical behavior.

“They promote this Jesuit value, cura personalis, that means care for the whole person,” Haggerty told Rewire. “So they’re promoting this idea, but then turning around and not living it out by lying to students about their health care.”