A women’s health care center in Attleboro is accusing an unlicensed crisis pregnancy center that opened next door of trying to mislead its patients and persuade them not to have abortions, even stealing contact information and giving women false information about appointments.
A lawsuit filed Thursday in US District Court in Boston by Four Women Health Services LLC alleges that Attleboro Women’s Health Center, which also operates under the name Abundant Hope Pregnancy Resource Center, broke computer fraud, consumer protection, and wiretapping laws in its efforts to block abortions, court records show.
Matthew Patton, one of Four Women’s attorneys filing the case, said Attleboro Women’s Health “is manipulating the reproductive health care marketplace” in an effort to “prevent women from accessing their chosen health care services.”
The suit names as defendants the pregnancy center and its president, Catherine Roman; treasurer, Nicole Carges; and executive director, Darlene Howard. Howard said in an email Thursday that the center had no comment on the allegations.
A spokesperson for the state Department of Public Health confirmed that Attleboro Women’s Health is not licensed to provide medical care in Massachusetts.
Attleboro police Lieutenant Stephen Graney said Thursday that he couldn’t verify whether a crime had been reported to the department. A spokesperson for the Bristol district attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to inquiries about whether allegations had been reported to prosecutors.
The suit says Four Women was founded “in 1998 to ensure that all women have access to high quality reproductive healthcare,” and that Attleboro Women’s Health attempted to open an office in the same building in 2018 but failed and instead moved into the building next door, where it shares a parking lot with the clinic.
“Defendants proclaim that they have performed hundreds of ‘medical appointments’ and ‘medical tests,’ at the monetary value of $157,000 in 2023 alone,” the suit alleges. “Defendants tout these medical ‘services,’ including how they interfere with women accessing Four Women, in connection with efforts to raise funds from donors for their work manipulating the reproductive healthcare marketplace.”
The plaintiffs allege the crisis pregnancy center “breached Four Women’s electronic platforms to access confidential patient-client communications” and then “used the intercepted communications to contact Four Women patients directly for the purpose of preventing them from accessing lawful reproductive healthcare.”
Four Women is seeking a preliminary injunction to stop Attleboro Women’s Health from allegedly “ hacking into and obtaining” private information from third-party patient scheduling platforms that store information virtually in “the cloud.”
In one example, a woman contacted Four Women for the first time on Oct. 30, 2023, via one of the platforms to schedule an ultrasound after a positive home pregnancy test and within minutes received a call from someone claiming to work at Four Women who scheduled an appointment for a time when the clinic doesn’t see patients, according to the document.
On May 1, according to the filing, a woman contacted Four Women to schedule an abortion and just over an hour later received a call, allegedly from Attleboro Women’s Health’s phone number, from someone who indicated they were calling from the clinic and said she would have to have an ultrasound at Attleboro Women’s Health before she could receive a medication abortion.
A woman booking a birth control appointment in August 2023 and another woman seeking a medication abortion in May also allegedly received misleading calls from Attleboro Women’s Health, which the suit claims told the first woman it couldn’t provide “birth control and instead invited her to a diaper give-away.”
The lawsuit seeks to permanently bar Attleboro Women’s Health from accessing Four Women’s data, misleading potential patients, providing ultrasounds, or promoting itself as offering “board-certified doctors and nurses” or “the full range of appropriate and standard medical care.”
It also seeks court fees and money damages of $100 for each day Attleboro Women’s Health violates a court order or $10,000, whichever is greater, under federal law, and $100 a day or $1,000, whichever is greater, under state law, as well as triple damages and interest for unfair trade practices.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him @jeremycfox.
