By Imani Laird
This January, bracing the winter cold, delighted anti-abortion advocates traveled throughout the streets of Washington, D.C., for the annual March for Life.
Two days earlier, the U.S. House of Representatives had delivered them a major victory. In a narrow vote of 215 to 209, the House passed House Resolution 6945, the “Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act,” and sent it to the Senate for review.
Simply looking at the name, this bill sounds like a compassionate lifeline for struggling parents. In fact, it is designed to protect a controversial pipeline of cash: the diversion of federal anti-poverty funds into the coffers of anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs), the overwhelming majority of which are religious.
Also known as anti-abortion fake clinics, CPCs “portray themselves as medical facilities that provide comprehensive reproductive care [but] are driven by religious convictions opposing abortion and do not provide patients with a full spectrum of reproductive options.”
In prior years, the Biden administration sought to close the regulatory loophole that allows states to use the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to fund these faith-based organizations.
H.R. 6945 attempts to codify this loophole permanently, ensuring states can continue to bankroll religiously motivated programs with money meant for the poorest of American families.
Crisis pregnancy centers’ deceptive practices
So what makes the funding of CPCs so lamentable? Walking into a typical crisis pregnancy center, you might think you are in a medical clinic. Staff often wear white lab coats.
They offer free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. But these centers are not comprehensive medical facilities.
They exist to intercept vulnerable pregnant people and dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies.
Staff typically have no medical training. Centers may have obtained licenses to conduct ultrasounds, but fetal images are used to dissuade women from abortion.
Many aren’t bound by HIPAA privacy laws, and multiple undercover investigations have documented CPC staff feeding clients blatant medical disinformation, such as falsely claiming that abortions cause breast cancer or permanent infertility.
Most CPCs are affiliated with evangelical Christian networks and national anti-abortion organizations, but rather than being transparent about their ideological position, they advertise themselves as unbiased.
In addition to their anti-abortion work, other services for parents rarely come without strings attached. Rather than handing out free diapers to needy parents, many CPCs utilize a curriculum called “Earn While You Learn.” To get basic necessities like baby formula or a car seat, clients must earn “mommy bucks” by attending mandatory classes.
These classes are heavily saturated with religious messaging. Clients report being forced to attend Bible studies, abstinence seminars, and “sexual integrity” workshops to access the supplies they desperately need. The curriculum’s own promotional material boasts that the program “creates openings for the counselor to share Christ.”
What is TANF?
Created during the 1996 welfare-reform era, TANF is the primary federal cash assistance program for families living in deep poverty.
But unlike its predecessors, TANF is given to states as a “block grant,” meaning states get a chunk of federal money and wide latitude on how to spend it.
States must ensure the money meets one of four broad goals. While the first two goals focus strictly on assisting needy families and promoting job preparation, the third goal, “preventing and reducing the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies,” has no such limits.
Today, it’s estimated only about 20 percent of eligible, low-income families actually receive direct cash assistance from TANF.
Funding instead has been increasingly funneled into crisis pregnancy centers.
Pennsylvania, the pioneer of using TANF for CPCs, offers a cautionary tale.
In 2001, Republican U.S. Senator Rick Santorum received approval from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to use TANF for support of CPCs. However, in 2017, the state discovered that a portion of its public grants were used to expand CPCs into other states.
This isn’t an isolated practice. In 2021, at least ten states were actively diverting TANF funds to CPCs.
The Texas “Thriving Texas Families” (TTF) program commands a $140 million budget. Texas lawmakers shower CPCs with millions in state and TANF funds for “educational” classes and brochures, but explicitly refuse to mandate that these organizations provide actual medical care. When lawmakers proposed giving just 2 percent of the TTF budget directly to secular diaper banks, which distribute aid without ideological strings, the measure was defeated.
The bottom line on crisis pregnancy centers
H.R. 6945 and the ongoing diversion of TANF funds to crisis pregnancy centers highlight a profound distortion of the American social safety net. When poverty relief is weaponized as a tool for proselytization, the government ceases to be a protector of the vulnerable. It’s a betrayal of the poorest families who desperately need cash assistance, and a direct assault on the separation of church and state.