One day at Planned Parenthood, a patient came in for a procedural abortion. After her procedure, she broke out in tears— relieved to finally have gotten compassionate care.

She had initially found herself at the crisis pregnancy center a few floors above our clinic. This is true of almost all of the Planned Parenthoods in NYC—there’s a crisis pregnancy center within spitting distance. They had told her that she could get a free ultrasound, but that the tech wasn’t there that day. They confirmed her pregnancy with a urine pregnancy test and scheduled her to come back in one week.

At that follow-up appointment, she was shown an ultrasound that raised red flags for her. She knew she was very early in pregnancy and that, based on what she had read on the Internet, the ultrasound would only be able to see a smudge that represented the developing pregnancy. Instead, she was looking at a fully formed fetus with easily recognizable parts.

She was told at that visit that she was 18 weeks pregnant. She was also told that the fetus could feel pain and some other traumatizing and medically inaccurate information.

Suspicious of the intent of these providers, she found her way to Planned Parenthood. When we did her ultrasound at our clinic, we saw that she was barely six weeks pregnant.