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The legislation is designed to preclude a new HHS rule from surreptitiously undermining the ability of crisis pregnancy centers to help low-income women and their children.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would prevent the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from barring states from providing federal funding to crisis pregnancy centers.
HHS proposed a rule on October 2, 2023, that would limit states’ ability to distribute Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to pro-life pregnancy resource centers.
According to HHS’s proposal on the Federal Register, the rule would, among other objectives, “establish a ceiling on the term ‘needy’; (2) clarify when an expenditure is ‘reasonably calculated to accomplish a TANF purpose’; and (3) exclude as an allowable TANF maintenance-of-effort (MOE) expenditures cash donations from non-governmental third parties and the value of third-party in-kind contributions.”
Opponents of the move claim that this is an attempt to strip funding from pro-life crisis pregnancy centers. Their opposition comes amid attempts by states at shutting down such centers for being “fake clinics” that supposedly deceive women.
Ever since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that overturned Roe v. Wade, crisis pregnancy centers have been the subject of smears and hyperbole from high-profile lawmakers, such as Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., but also have been hit by a wave of terrorist attacks by radical pro-abortion groups, terrorists who often use the very language of those same lawmakers.
HHS officials argue that the rule is intended to stop funding programs that provide counseling to women after they become pregnant because such programs do not meet TANF’s goal of reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies. The proposed rule actually singles out crisis pregnancy centers, claiming that they do not help accomplish this purpose.
Interestingly, however, HHS acknowledges in the proposed rule that TANF funds can be used to accomplish other conservative purposes, such as:
(1) provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives;
(2) end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage;
(3) prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies; and
(4) encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.
Proponents of crisis pregnancy centers argue that their mission is designed to accomplish some, if not all, of these tasks through their work with pregnant women and families.
Nearly 30 members of Congress, both senators and representatives, sent a letter to Secretary of HHS Xavier Becerra in early December to state their opposition to the rule, noting that HHS appears to be attempting to steer funding in a way that advances abortion. They wrote:
“HHS’ singling out of pregnancy centers for performing post-conception pregnancy counseling also reveals a glaring hypocrisy, making the Proposed Rule arbitrary and capricious. Planned Parenthood affiliates reported expending $1.04 million in TANF funds in 2018. Planned Parenthood performs abortions, for which the expenditure of TANF funds is prohibited, yet curiously, HHS does not raise concerns, or demand special justification, for States that have provided TANF funds to Planned Parenthood affiliates.
Chillingly, HHS suggests TANF support for pregnancy centers should be steered toward family planning programs more typical of the business models of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry instead. Specifically, HHS states TANF funds should be directed to ‘comprehensive sex education, family planning services, pregnancy prevention programs, and community mobilization services for at risk youth that increase access to pregnancy prevention programs for teens.’ This seems to be another attempt by the Biden administration to funnel taxpayer dollars to the abortion industry.”
Last week, the House of Representatives passed HR 6918, or the Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act, which would bar HHS from enforcing this rule.
Before the passing of the legislation, House members heard testimony from supporters, including Jean Marie Davis, executive director of the Branches Pregnancy Resource Center in New Hampshire. Davis was a victim of human trafficking and, as a result, became pregnant with her son.
“I wanted to abort my child and they told me about a pregnancy center, and a woman named Phyllis Phelps was there, and she said to me, ‘How can I help you?’ And I hadn’t heard those words in over 10 years because all they wanted to do was either rape me, pull a knife out on me, pull a gun on me, and just use my body” she stated.
After hearing her baby’s heartbeat, she decided to keep her son.
As executive director, she says that she tries to show that same love and support to other women. “We actually do life with you, and that’s what our center at Branches does,” she testified. “We say we do life with each other, however it may look. [There] is a false narrative that’s out there that we don’t help women. I am true proof that not only do they help you, but they actually get you set into a place where you can turn around and provide services and help the community with more hope — His name is Jesus.”
The legislation, of course, faces steep opposition in the Senate.
HHS’s rule change has received strong pushback from lawmakers and pro-life groups that claim HHS is harming pregnancy centers due to its ideological opposition to them rather than any unfitness on the part of the centers. Five states at one time granted TANF funding to pregnancy resource centers, a number that is now down to just three, but lawmakers from each of the five states sent a letter to HHS opposing the change. It explains:
“The proposed rule suggests PRCs are not good partners for state-run TANF programs. We disagree with that assertion and contend this is for the states to decide. As elected officials, voted for and held accountable by our neighbors, we are closest to the people and know which entities within our communities can best fulfill the goals of TANF to help families flourish. It is our experience that PRCs are good partners in our TANF programs.”
HHS’s rule change may not affect most pregnancy clinics, but it will harm some of them and force them to either seek more donations or cut back on services. That’s because these organizations aren’t for profit. They don’t make money off of women in their most vulnerable moments or pocket mass handouts from the government. They exist as not-for-profit groups that try to help women realize that they have options and that they don’t have to abort their baby.
These clinics provide clothes, formula, food, car seats, parenting classes, help with paying bills, and so much more. Yet they are slandered as “fake clinics” that somehow deceive and harm women. These are baseless attacks intended to shut them down and funnel more pregnant women into abortion clinics, which do profit off of women, receive billions in government funding, kill children, and kick money back to politicians.
To many, this rule change may not seem like a big deal, but it is yet one more underhanded attempt by the left to shut down or hinder as many crisis pregnancy clinics as possible.
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