New reporting from the American Independent reveals Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin Kevin Nicholson’s close, personal ties with crisis pregnancy centers — fake health care clinics that lie to pregnant people to coerce them out of getting abortions.
Nicholson founded and ran No Better Friend, a tax-exempt organization whose “advocacy” emphasized referring pregnant people to these fake clinics.
While these fake clinics do not offer abortions, they often lie to patients and say they do — only to use bunk “science,” anti-abortion propaganda, and outright falsehoods to manipulate vulnerable people.
The vast majority of Wisconsin voters do not support overturning Roe v. Wade. And yet every single candidate in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary — including Nicholson — would sign abortion bans and do just that.
The American Independent: Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate’s group refers pregnant people to fake ‘medical’ centers
By: Adrian Cole | April 21, 2022
- Kevin Nicholson, a Republican candidate running for governor of Wisconsin, in 2019 founded and ran No Better Friend Corp., a tax-exempt conservative advocacy group whose focus includes opposition to abortion. The group’s efforts include pushing pregnant people to avoid abortion by referring them to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” which he called “a super tactical way” of achieving that end.
- These fake centers are funded by anti-abortion groups and go by different names like “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) and “pregnancy resource centers.” Their aim is to prevent people who are pregnant from accessing abortion in a timely manner.
- The Wisconsin Women’s Health Alliance conducted a study of 20 Wisconsin CPCs and found “100% of Wisconsin-based CPCs advertise ‘options counseling’ on their websites, yet they refuse to offer information on the full range of options available to pregnant people, and actively counsel against abortion.” It also noted that many of them shame and frighten patients into continuing with unwanted pregnancies by claiming that there is a high chance they would experience “mental health challenges” if they had an abortion.
- A 2018 report in the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics said that while CPCs are technically legal, they “do not meet the standards of accepted medical ethics.”
- Wisconsin is one of several states in which abortion bans would automatically come into force again if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide.
- No Better Friend Corp.’s former executive director, Darryl Carlson, was one of 10 Republicans who made a fraudulent attempt to award Wisconsin’s electoral votes to former President Donald Trump in 2020 despite Joe Biden having won in the state. Soon after Nicholson announced his candidacy for governor, Carlson’s name was scrubbed from the No Better Friend Corp. website, and Carlson’s LinkedIn profile now identifies him as a fire support officer for the National Guard.
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Published: Apr 21, 2022