By Alexandra Brodsky • @azbrodsky • 10 years ago

How are “crisis pregnancy centers” funded?

NARAL president and overall BAMF Ilyse Hogue published a piece in the Nation yesterday calling out “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) for what they really are: traps to obstruct pregnant people from accessing abortion care. As we’ve written about before, these centers dishonestly advertise to those considering termination, pretending to be abortion clinics. Employees then dissuade clients from seeking abortions by all available methods: shaming, intimidation, medical lies.

Disturbingly, CPCs stay afloat with state financial support. Hogue writes:

In Virginia, part of the answer [of CPC funding] is Ken Cuccinelli, the current attorney general and Republican candidate for governor. He has said he was “proud” to help establish a “Choose Life” license plate as a state senator, the proceeds of which go directly to CPCs. (Similar plates fund CPCs all over the country, from Mississippi to Massachusetts.)

License plates aren’t the only way states divert money to CPCs. In June, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed a budget that diverts money away from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and sends it to crisis pregnancy centers. That’s money meant to help the most vulnerable families pay for things like food or clothing or rent, now paying for facilities to harass and misinform some of those very same women who might need that assistance. And North Carolina’s budget moved $250,000 out of the Women’s Health Fund, which provides care for the poor and uninsured, and sent it to the state’s largest group of CPCs.

You can read the whole post here.

Washington, DC

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com. During her four years at the site, she wrote about gender violence, reproductive justice, and education equity and ran the site's book review column. She is now a Skadden Fellow at the National Women's Law Center and also serves as the Board Chair of Know Your IX, a national student-led movement to end gender violence, which she co-founded and previously co-directed. Alexandra has written for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Nation, and she is the co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future. She has spoken about violence against women and reproductive justice at campuses across the country and on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ESPN, and NPR.

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com.

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