FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 3, 2022
Contact: alexa@conwaystrategic.com
Anti-Abortion Centers Make False Claims and Embellish Their Support for Parents and Pregnant People
Statement from Ashley Underwood, Director, Equity Forward on leaked SCOTUS statement and claims that anti-abortion centers can support pregnant people and parents.
“If the Supreme Court draft eventually becomes the ruling, states will have free reign to restrict or eliminate abortion. If this happens, there will be many more people who will be forced to carry pregnancies to term and they will need support.
We've seen the rhetoric falsely claiming that anti-abortion centers can step in to support pregnant people when abortion is pushed out of reach. This is simply untrue. The primary purpose of anti-abortion centers has never been to provide support –they exist to deter and delay people from getting abortions. AACs nationwide invest millions of dollars in aggressive and misleading propaganda effortsand provide little in the way of healthcare or material support. Increasingly this scheme is funded with tax dollars siphoned from programs that actually provide healthcare and support people working to make ends meet.
AACs are not a replacement for health care, nor are they able to support pregnant people or parents. Our research has shown that instead of providing goods or even really support, AAC are often spending more on marketing and salaries and embellishing the support they provide.
When AACs are funded with public dollars, anti-abortion politicians are actively choosing to deny direct support to people who are in need of assistance. Instead of funneling money to programs that spend more on propaganda and overhead than services, we can support people getting health care, accurate information about and access to all of their options, including abortion, adoption and for parents, meaningful support to help raise children once they are born.”
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Specific examples of AAC lack of services and support
Details below can be found in Seven Reasons Why Anti-Abortion Centers Are a Problem, Not a Solution
Human Coalition, one anti-abortion center network, claimed in a statement on May 2 that they are able to support pregnant women in need. In 2019, they issued a similar claim in a brief filed in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization saying, pregnancy resource centers, “...provided nearly $270 million in assistance to 2 million people nationwide.”
$270 million sounds generous but that works out to just $135 per person. $135 could help someone in a temporary bind but does little to help people in the long term who are working to
make ends meet including those who make up nearly one-third of people living in poverty in the United States.
Human Coalition's 2018 990 shows the organization spent only two percent of its budget on client services. Of its more than $11million dollar budget
● Less than 300k went to client services
● Salaries made up more than $5.2 million, nearly half of its budget.
(990 can be found at the end of this profile on Human Coalition)
Similarly, in its Dobbs brief, Heartbeat International states, “In 2019, pregnancy help centers provided nearly 1.85 million people with free services ... and material assistance, including more than 2 million baby clothing outfits, more than 1.2 million packs of diapers, more than 19,000 strollers, and more than 30,000 new car seats.”
In other words, AACs provided: a stroller to 1% of their clientele, a car seat to 1.6% of their clientele, distributed 0.6 packs of diapers and gave away 1.5 outfits per person. The “help” from AACs is inadequate and a far cry from the very real list of material items needed for babies.