NC House budget would fund pro-life counseling centers that provide no actual health care
Buried deep in the budget proposed by state House Republicans is a $9 million dollar appropriation of taxpayer money to fund three anti-abortion franchises – unlicensed and largely unregulated organizations that pose as health care providers for pregnant people.
These facilities – known as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)– do not provide substantive medical care or clinical services and have been condemned by physicians, legislators, academics, and reproductive rights organizations for their coercive and misleading practices.
CPCs, first introduced in the 1970s, have only ever existed to block, intimidate, and shame people out of accessing abortion care. Their strategy, as seen in their billboards that say “Scared? Pregnant? Call...” is to prey on people who feel in crisis and are looking for information and options. North Carolina is home to approximately 100 CPCs that are often purposefully located next door or near actual abortion providers to deceive patients and create confusion.
CPCs take advantage of the fact that North Carolina, a state where Medicaid has still not been expanded, is shamefully home to over 600,000 residents who don’t have access to affordable healthcare. These residents may see such advertisements, located throughout vulnerable communities, and be deceived into thinking that is where they can access the care they seek.
An examination of the reports filed by anti-abortion fake clinics with NC DHHS reveals many troubling features. First, their own reports indicate that these clinics see a very small number of clients in proportion to the amount of money given to them by the state.Second, CPCs do not report offering actual healthcare and overwhelmingly do not refer their clients to family planning services or adoption agencies. Third, CPCs have offered no evidence of improving maternal/infant health outcomes, a critical metric in North Carolina, as our state has one of the highest maternal/infant mortality rates in the country, especially among Black families.
Public money should not be diverted from legitimate state departments and healthcare organizations that provide actual care, have proven results of reducing maternal and infant mortality, and offer comprehensive and medically accurate reproductive health care.
If the $9 million in the 2021-2022 House budget currently proposed for CPCs were instead given to Family Planning Medicaid services, that money would provide actual health services to 75,000 women of reproductive age in North Carolina. Shamefully, efforts in the North Carolina Senate to redirect funding for CPCs back to legitimate programs that address disproportionate maternal mortality among historically marginalized populations have been dismissed.
It is critical for North Carolina to take back taxpayer dollars from exploitative anti-abortion CPCs and return it to actual evidence-based reproductive health care programs that provide comprehensive contraceptive methods and counseling services. Sadly, not expanding Medicaid, cutting funding to reproductive healthcare programs, and giving money to fake clinics tells us one thing: Women’s reproductive healthcare is not a priority for NCGA Republican leadership.