Arkansas has set aside $2 million in state funds to support pro-life pregnancy centers as several states and activists across the United States have begun to see providing money to such organizations as an essential part of the pro-life movement.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed House Bill 1202 into law last week, one of several pieces of legislation she approved. The bill passed with no opposition in both the Republican-controlled Arkansas House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled state Senate.
The legislation spans more than 40 pages and includes several appropriations for fiscal year 2025-26. Included in the bill is $2 million for “pregnancy help organization grants.”
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The measure defines a “pregnancy help organization” as a nonprofit that “seeks to provide a range of services to individuals facing an unintended pregnancy with the intention of encouraging pregnant women to give birth to their unborn children.”
Examples of organizations eligible for the grants include crisis pregnancy centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies and social services agencies that provide prenatal care and other maternity healthcare and nutrition services.
The legislation defines a “pregnancy help organization” is one that doesn’t offer or refer women for surgical or chemical abortions.
According to Arkansas Family Council, this isn’t the first time the state has provided funding to pro-life pregnancy centers.
“Since 2022 Family Council has worked with the Arkansas Legislature and the governor to secure funding every year for pregnancy resource centers. These state-funded grants have helped support dozens of charities that assist women and children in Arkansas,” the advocacy group said in a statement provided to The Christian Post.
Arkansas isn’t the only state to fund crisis pregnancy centers. Earlier this month, Kansas lawmakers overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a measure providing state funding to crisis pregnancy centers. In 2023, the governor of West Virginia approved similar legislation.
Efforts to fund crisis pregnancy centers come after pro-life activist Lila Rose suggested in an interview with CP that following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision determining that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion, the pro-life movement “should be focused on both private and public financial support for families to help them raise their children.”
Following the Dobbs decision, abortion became illegal in almost all cases in several states, including Arkansas.
Crisis pregnancy centers have also come under fire from Democratic lawmakers at both the state and federal levels after the Dobbs decision.
Separately some pro-abortion activists have attacked pro-life pregnancy centers and churches, especially after the Dobbs ruling was leaked to the press back in 2022.
Following Politico’s publication of a leaked draft of the Dobbs decision followed by the ruling itself, pro-life pregnancy centers across the U.S. found themselves subject to varying degrees of vandalism.
A 2023 report compiled by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the pro-life advocacy group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, found that 2,750 pro-life pregnancy centers across the U.S. provided over $350 million worth of goods and services to expectant mothers in 2022.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
