It is evident why the abortion industry is opposed to pregnancy help centers. Every woman or girl who chooses to seek assistance from a Pregnancy Help Center (PHC) rather than from a Planned Parenthood clinic (PP) is effectively denying the latter a potential source of revenue. This is because PP is an organization that profits from the sale of contraceptives and other reproductive health services to women who are already pregnant or who are seeking to become pregnant.
Monopolies and would-be monopolies are inherently averse to competition, and the abortion industry is no exception. It is evident that there are currently a greater number of PHCs than abortion clinics. One can reasonably posit that the landscape would be markedly different were there no Pregnancy Help Centers. The abortion industry is eager to see this come to fruition.
The Rewire News Group published two articles this past week that have attracted significant attention: “The Grift of So-Called Crisis Pregnancy Centers” by Jessica Mason Pieklo and “Anti-Abortion Centers Spent Over $600M in One Year. That’s the Tip of the Iceberg” by Garnet Henderson. The former is a self-promotional piece that trumpets Henderson’s “deep dive into the hundreds of millions of dollars funneling through so-called crisis pregnancy centers and what, if anything, those fake clinics are doing with that money.”
Henderson begins with the usual litany of attacks, which are as redundant as they are repetitious:
“Crisis pregnancy centers,” or anti-abortion centers, are known for deceiving and manipulating people seeking information about abortion. They often pose as legitimate abortion clinics, intentionally obscuring their real purpose. They promote dangerous medical misinformation such as abortion pill “reversal.” They also discourage safer sex practices, and because few of them are actual medical facilities, they don’t adhere to medical standards for confidentiality and safety.
However, this gross distortion of what PHCs actually do is not the focus of her inquiry. According to documents reviewed by Rewire News Group, the total may have been closer to $1 billion. This leads to the question of where the funds from crisis pregnancy centers are being allocated.
Upon reading her article, which I did twice, I still do not understand where she believes the money is going. (The discrepancy between the figure of “over $600M in one year” and the figure of “closer to $1 billion” is also perplexing.) It seems that Henderson believes that this represents a form of backdoor lobbying.
Many CPCs [Crisis Pregnancy Centers] report that they don’t engage in lobbying at all. However, given their large expenditures on advertising and promotional expenses, that seems doubtful.
For instance, if there’s an abortion ban being debated in the state legislature, is a “Choose Life” sign lobbying? Or just an ad for a CPC?
Is she being facetious? One might be forgiven for questioning the logic of the argument that holding a Choose Life sign makes one a lobbyist. Such a proposition represents a profound and somewhat absurd departure from the norm.
Furthermore, there are a number of concerning assets.
Another standout data point is the sky-high value of CPCs’ assets—well over $800 million total among this small group. The average organization in this dataset has $515,454 in assets, but dozens have assets greater than $1 million. A few hold more than $2 million or $3 million. For most, this stems from owning the building in which they’re housed—but many have significant amounts of money sitting in the bank, too. [Underlining is mine.]
A Pregnancy Help Center, which I am intimately familiar with, required a significant period of time to accumulate sufficient funds to take the initiative of purchasing their own building rather than leasing. The organization had amassed a considerable sum of capital, which it had invested in a property that could be considered a “nefarious asset.”
There is a great deal of speculation that PHCs are financially well-endowed and remunerate their senior personnel at a considerable rate, which is at odds with their self-perception as small, scrappy, and volunteer-run organizations.
This assertion is followed by the observation that this is not an inherently problematic phenomenon. The remuneration of senior staff is frequently perceived as an indicator of inefficiency or excessive expenditure by non-profit organisations.
Such attacks continue to be levelled.
It is curious that a caption over a graphic should read, “While taxpayer money has been a boon for crisis pregnancy centers across the country, many of them still get the majority of their funds from private donors.” One might inquire whether this is a beneficial phenomenon.
Henderson posits that if there are indeed approximately 4,000 CPCs nationwide, based on the average expenditure per facility, they could collectively be spending north of $1 billion every year. It is evident that she is aware of the fact that in its latest report, Planned Parenthood took in “nearly $2 billion in revenues this past year,” and that “revenues exceeded expenses at Planned Parenthood by a whopping $204.7 million.” It is recommended that readers take the time to peruse the article published by Rewire News Group.
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
