LITTLE ROCK (LifeSiteNews) — Arkansas has distributed $999,999.77 to pregnancy centers over the past year, realizing lawmakers’ commitment to providing women with life-affirming alternatives to the abortions they have almost completely eliminated in the state.
As detailed by the Little Rock-based social conservative group the Family Council, the funds were authorized last year by legislation from Republican state Sen. Scott Flippo and Rep. Lane Jean to support crisis pregnancy centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies, and state agencies involved in pregnancy and maternal support.
Further, over the next year, the funding will be followed by an additional $2 million signed into law in April by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to entities that provide pregnancy-related nutritional services and information, prenatal care options, social, emotional, and material support, and more – with language making clear that abortionists are not eligible for the funds.
“The funding will provide additional grants to pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies, and other organizations that provide material support to women with unplanned pregnancies in the coming months,” Family Council’s Jerry Cox said. “This is something all Arkansans should be proud of.”
In March, Sanders also signed an executive order establishing an Arkansas Strategic Committee for Maternal Health, tasked with developing strategies to “Improve education regarding women’s and maternal health, especially prenatal and postpartum visits; Improve maternal health before, during, and after pregnancy; Increase access to quality maternal health services; and Improve statewide coordination for maternal health data and reporting.”
All this work serves as a companion to the state’s efforts to prohibit abortion, which since June 2022 has been illegal in Arkansas except when allegedly “necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.” Direct abortion is always gravely immoral and never needed nor ethically justified to save a mother’s life. Last month, an “Induced Abortion Report” released by the state’s Department of Health showed no abortions had been reported at all in the state in 2023.
Crisis pregnancy centers have long provided low-income women with a wide variety of services, including ultrasounds, basic medical care, adoption referrals, parenting classes, and children’s supplies that help mitigate the fears and burdens that lead some to choose abortion. For that reason, they have long been a target of left-wing rage, with attacks often focusing on claims that they “deceive” women, both about abortion and about their own services. But the pro-life contentions most often derided as “misinformation” are in fact true, and accusations of self-misrepresentation typically refer to little more than the fact that ads for them appear in online searches for the term “abortion.”
Despite labeling itself “pro-choice,” the abortion movement is notoriously hostile to any and all types of alternatives to abortion, from publicity campaigns to maligning crisis pregnancy centers, to attempts to strip medical licenses from pro-life doctors, to violence and threats against pregnancy centers that are less likely to be prosecuted than purported cases of anti-abortion violence.