First, States Banned Abortion. Now, They’re Pouring Hundreds of Millions Into Fake Clinics.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, 23 states have allocated nearly $500 million to predatory anti-abortion centers. Meanwhile, abortion funds that are actually helping people access care are struggling to make ends meet.

By Kylie Cheung | August 7, 2024 | 2:29pm

Photo: Getty Images Abortion Politics

First, States Banned Abortion. Now, They’re Pouring Hundreds of Millions Into Fake Clinics.

In 2023, the first full year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and states across the country banned abortion, more than 170,000 people traveled out-of-state for in-clinic abortion care. Instead of helping traveling patients with these costs or otherwise directly assisting pregnant people, it seems state governments have gone a different route. In the two years since the end of Roe, state governments have poured close to $500 million into anti-abortion facilities known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” according to a new report from the watchdog group Equity Forward. As a reminder, most CPCs don’t offer health care, and by design, they prey on potential abortion seekers, push lies to convince them against having abortions, and, in some cases, have collected their personal medical data for nefarious purposes.

Equity Forward reviewed the state budgets of 23 states that allocate government funding to CPCs for its report. Since 1995, these states have poured over $1 billion—a figure larger than the GDPs of some countries—into CPCs. In the two years since Dobbs v. Jackson Health, alone, these states have sent $489 million to CPCs. A separate report from Health Management earlier this year found 650 CPCs received $429 million in federal funding between 2017 and 2023.

Most Popular

Unsurprisingly, the same states that have totally banned or severely restricted abortion have poured the most money into CPCs since Dobbs. North Carolina, which enacted a 12-week ban last year, has spent about $49 million since 2013 to support anti-abortion centers, $33 million of which has been allocated to CPCs since the summer of 2022. At the same time, among the five states that allocated the most funding to CPCs between 2005 and 2023, two currently protect abortion rights: Pennsylvania, which gave $158,461,000, and Minnesota, which gave $48,593,000—both ended their partnerships with the anti-abortion Alternatives to Abortion program in 2023.

Also in 2023, Florida passed its six-week ban that took effect this May, with the state sending $25 million to CPCs—more than five times what it dedicated to CPCs in 2022. Arkansas and West Virginia didn’t offer state funding to CPCs before Dobbs, but sent them a combined $8 million in 2023. Texas, meanwhile, directs more state funding to CPCs than any other state in the nation, allocating $140 million to CPCs in its current annual budget—compared to just $5 million in 2005. In July, ProPublica published a report detailing the excessive waste and zero oversight or accountability around what CPCs in Texas do with this funding.

“It’s painful to think of the good that $500 million could do for needy families and communities, and anti-abortion pregnancy centers are just not meeting those needs,” Shireen Shakouri, executive vice president of Reproaction, told Jezebel. Reproaction also tracks CPCs’ tactics and funding.

In 2022, Olivia Raisner, co-founder of Mayday Health, went undercover inside five different state-funded CPCs in Indiana. She told Jezebel at the time that these facilities “offer free ultrasounds, financial assistance, all the resources necessary, and make it very tempting to lean on them,” targeting especially vulnerable abortion seekers like young people and low-income people. Many CPCs promise parenting services and resources like free diapers, but then require clients to attend Bible study to receive these benefits.

“Even if [CPCs] offered the services and care they proclaim to—and they most often don’t—these fake clinics do not deserve taxpayer dollars to push judgment, shame, and lies about abortion and pregnancy,” Shakouri said. “Pregnant people deserve real resources, not a biased third party telling them they’re wrong about their bodies and futures.”

Equity Forward executive director Ashley Underwood similarly expressed frustration as these hundreds of millions in state funding “could have gone to improve maternal health and provide direct support to parents and families,” but were “instead poured into the coffers of organizations that face little to no oversight and fail to show a positive impact.”

It’s telling that states are directing such significant funding to anti-abortion groups post-Dobbs, instead of directly to diaper banks or other community nonprofits. Anti-abortion centers exist to surveil and collect sensitive information about potential abortion seekers, which is all the more dangerous at a time when pregnancy increasingly goes hand-in-hand with criminal risk.

One woman who was once preyed on by a CPC before she found a real abortion clinic previously told Jezebel that, while at the CPC, workers used every minute she was there to collect information about her. “To this day, I don’t know what they used it for, if they still have it,” she said. “The whole time I was there, they kept talking to me, trying to make me feel like they’re my friends so I would tell more about myself—actual health care workers have never asked me the things they asked, like about my family, my life.”

Other abortion seekers who have been lured into CPCs under false premises have said they were stalked and harassed by staff after leaving. Some even say they were forced to sign contracts pledging to not have an abortion before leaving the premises. These are the organizations receiving hundreds of millions in state funding post-Dobbs—all while abortion funds are spending more than ever.