John Oliver examined centers designed to prevent abortions on his show on Sunday, criticizing their “disingenuous and predatory” tactics.

During his HBO show Last Week Tonight, the comic spoke about crisis pregnancy centers and how their “primary purpose is to talk women out of terminating a pregnancy”.

John Oliver's gay rabbit book parody outsells Mike Pence's original on Amazon Read more

He played footage from a key figure in the world of anti-abortion activism who said that it was against nature for women to not want children and how they should be dying for their babies, not the other way around. Oliver replied: “The only females made to die for their babies are Pacific salmon.”

In the US, there are 2,752 of these centers compared with 1,671 abortion providers.

“If you believe abortion is amoral, you are of course allowed to set up a center dedicated to convincing women of that but what is happening with CPCs is that way too often, women with unplanned pregnancies are being actively misled while trying to access healthcare,” Oliver said.

Many of them use the word choice in their names and give out advice that is medically inaccurate. They often pretend to be abortion clinics on the exterior to fool women to enter. “Normally, the strategy ‘pretend you’re an abortion clinic’ is not actually a great marketing stunt, although I am pretty sure that Radio Shack would have tried it if they’d thought of it,” Oliver said.

He criticized the “emotional manipulation” used by the people working at the centers. They will often write messages from the unborn babies during ultrasounds, such as “Hi Mommy and Daddy”.

“If you’re going to write an unrequested ultrasound message, at least be creative about it, like ‘I’m totally pooping in here’ or ‘I ate my twin’,” Oliver joked.

There are also claims from within CPCs that condoms are ineffective at preventing pregnancy. “For all the lengths that CPCs will go to to prevent abortions, many of them don’t do a key thing that would help that and that’s give women access to birth control,” he said.

Oliver continued: “The fact is if you want fewer abortions, you should love birth control. You should be filling Pez dispensers with birth control pills. You should be giving condoms out to trick-or-treaters.”

He claimed that their real goal is “controlling women’s sexual behavior”, as many of them are affiliated with religious figures.

“The real point here is: the tactics that CPCs often use are disingenuous and predatory and it’s absolutely critical that people understand that,” he said.