FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24, 2022
Contact: alexa@conwaystrategic.com
Statement from Ashley Underwood, Director, Equity Forward on Dobbs decision and the Supreme Court overturning nearly 50 years of rights.
“This final decision, which we had expected, anticipated and feared, is now a reality. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe and paved the way for states to decimate legal abortion. It was already hard enough for people to access abortion care, and it’s only going to get more difficult now.
We know two things for sure, there will be many more people who will be forced to carry pregnancies against their will and the impact will fall hardest on those who are working to make ends meet.
Anti-abortion centers (AACs, often referred to as crisis pregnancy centers or pregnancy resource centers) are claiming that they are able to help parents in need. 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.
The unyielding attacks on abortion access will mean more families in need in the coming months and years. Instead of funneling money into programs that spend more on propaganda than services and mislead people about abortion, we can connect people to health care, accurate information about and access to all of their options, including abortion, adoption, and 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
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Less than 300k went to client services
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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.