An estimated 2,500 mostly unregulated crisis pregnancy centers operate in the United States. If they were merely megaphones for their forced-birther propaganda, they’d be just like any other advocacy group, free to present their views and push their agenda. In their case, that agenda is to convince every pregnant woman who walks in the door intent on getting an abortion—or at least considering it—not to undergo the procedure.
But the centers do far more than engage in anything approaching honest persuasion. They flat-out lie to women about the psychological and physical risks of abortion, the course of fetal development, the possibility of breast cancer, etc. They try to get women who have decided they are going to have an abortion to delay getting the procedure, a delay that in a growing number of states means they will have passed the cut-off point for a legal abortion. The center staffers rarely bring up contraception. And most of them have no medical personnel on board.
Despite this, in 14 states, the CPCs—fake clinics though they be—receive taxpayer money, quite a lot of it, in fact, to subsidize their lies and harm women’s health by failing to provide the accurate information necessary for making a choice that fits each woman’s needs and wishes. Much of the money is diverted from federal abstinence-only programs, from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and from funding that used to go to Planned Parenthood centers.
Most infuriatingly, the TANF money is specifically allocated to the states with the intention of feeding hungry children.
In Missouri, the Republican-dominated legislature has approved taking $4.3 million from TANF to give to the Alternatives to Abortion Program, which has an overall budget of $6.3 million. AAP provides a big hunk of its money to maternity homes and the fake clinics. At last count, 69 of these fakes operated in Missouri.
In addition to that TANF transfer, since February Missouri lawmakers have been looking to boost tax credits for anyone or any business that donates money to the fake clinics.
As Teddy Wilson at Rewire.News writes:
There has been a precipitous reduction in the number of residents receiving public assistance since the implementation of those policies.
“Amidst this public health crisis, it’s wrong that some politicians are diverting money intended to help needy families in order to wage an ideological fight over abortion,” Dreith said. “Those aren’t the priorities of hardworking Missouri families.”
There were $2.4 million in tax credits claimed for donations to fake clinics during the 2017 fiscal year, and $7.2 million in tax credits claimed for donations to fake clinics from 2015 to 2017. If implemented, the increased tax credits could reduce tax revenue collected by the state by $4.5 million during the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years, according to an analysis of the bill by the Missouri Committee on Legislative Research.
Alison Dreith, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, told Wilson, “No matter what our beliefs about abortion are, we can all agree that federal food assistance money should help feed hungry kids, not fund an ideological agenda.”
In a compassionate, equality-minded world, Dreith would be right. Feeding hungry kids instead of using the money to promote anti-abortion lies would absolutely be something we could all agree on. However, the forced-birthers have for decades proved that they don’t agree and never will.