A watchdog organization is asking the Texas attorney general to investigate crisis pregnancy centers, over concerns the centers may be misrepresenting the privacy of sensitive client information.

The legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Corynne McSherry, wrote letters to four state attorneys general ― including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ― urging the states to look into crisis pregnancy centers.

“We’re just concerned that people are providing deeply personal information in a time of crisis and not realizing that … there might not be actually enforceable guidelines around how that information is being handled,” McSherry said.

Crisis pregnancy centers are operated by religious and other anti-abortion organizations; they may offer social support services and some prenatal care such as ultrasounds.

However, they aim to dissuade pregnant women from abortions, sometimes through misleading or false information.

With an estimated 205 crisis pregnancy centers in Texas, according to data from the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, the Lone Star State has the highest number of any state in the country.

The centers are also designed to look like health care clinics, but typically are not actually medical facilities ― which is part of what concerns EFF.

The organization worries crisis pregnancy centers are advertising or implying that they’re covered by federal health information privacy laws, when they are likely not.

The foundation identified some centers, including in Texas, that directly claimed to be covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) on their websites.

It gives people “a sense that, ‘There are some federal protections for my information here,’” McSherry said. “It does not appear that most of these centers are, in fact, governed by HIPAA.”

The EFF letters — which the organization sent at the end of January to the attorneys general in Texas, Arkansas, Florida and Missouri — asked officials to look into the situation as a way to protect residents.

EFF chose the four states because they seemed to be states where taxpayer dollars are used for crisis pregnancy centers. (Texas sent $140 million in the 2024-25 biennium to its Thriving Texas Families program, previously called Alternatives to Abortion.)

“We respectfully urge your office to investigate whether CPCs in Texas are violating Texas privacy and consumer protection laws by deceiving Texans as to how their private information will be retained and used,” McSherry wrote in the letter to Paxton.

Paxton’s office did not respond to The Dallas Morning News’ request for comment.

The organization also highlighted a case out of Louisiana, where a crisis pregnancy center posted online the names and personal information of 13 clients.

That breach prompted another watchdog group — Campaign for Accountability — to send a letter to the Louisiana attorney general in early December, urging the office to investigate.

Michael Clauw, the communications manager at Campaign for Accountability, said the Louisiana case proved that “this wasn’t just a hypothetical.”

In mid-December, the group sent five additional letters, urging the attorneys general in Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington to similarly investigate crisis pregnancy centers in their states.

“HIPAA largely doesn’t have anything to do with their operation, but they’re taking advantage of the branding of the word ‘HIPAA,’” Clauw said of the centers.

Clauw said that, at the core, it’s wrong to lie to women about how their personal information will be used. From his perspective, that concern should prompt a response from law enforcement, regardless of the agency’s overall view on abortion or crisis pregnancy centers.

McSherry said her letters are building on the work that Campaign for Accountability has already done. McSherry hopes the attorneys general will heed the calls for action, no matter their politics.

“We got enough information that it seems like a real problem here,” McSherry said. “So we’re just pleading with them to step in and, basically, do their jobs.”