Utah attorney general joins coalition urging Yelp to lift its crisis pregnancy center advisories

(The Center Square) – Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined a 24-state coalition of attorneys general hoping to get Yelp to change its crisis pregnancy center policy this week.

Last year, Yelp announced it would issue consumer notices on the Yelp profiles of crisis pregnancy centers. These notices say that crisis pregnancy centers, “typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite,” according to a press release from the Attorney General’s office.

In their letter, the attorneys general argued that Yelp is holding crisis pregnancy centers to an unfair standard by not issuing advisories against abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood.

“The fact that Yelp has apparently applied the Consumer Notice only to crisis pregnancy centers means that Yelp has singled out crisis pregnancy centers for disparate treatment,” the letter said. “This sort of discrimination is unacceptable.”

The coalition argues that there was no need to recategorize the services offered by crisis pregnancy centers. It added that there is strong demand for the services these centers offer.

Crisis pregnancy centers provided ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, STD testing, parenting and prenatal education classes, recovery counseling, and other services worth more than $266 million to nearly two million Americans in 2019, according to Reyes’s office.

Other states that had an attorney general sign onto the letter include: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

A copy of the letter is available here.