Since Lift Louisiana’s founding, co-founder Michelle Erenberg has had her eye on Crisis Pregnancy Centers in our state and the government funding that helps fuel them. In 2022, we began a more intense focus on uncovering what they were up to and exposed their waste and misuse of public funds.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers, also known as Unlicensed or Unregulated Pregnancy Centers, are nonprofit anti-abortion centers that present themselves as medical clinics and often offer services such as free pregnancy tests and limited ultrasounds. However, they tend to be staffed by unlicensed employees who are not medical professionals, and give misleading and potentially harmful information regarding contraception or birth control, often backed with religiously guided reasoning. The website of one of these CPCs claimed emergency contraception “kills your baby,” while others claim that Plan B can cause cancer in order to discourage its use. These centers have been operating in Louisiana for over 30 years, and have been known to be subsidized by the government since 2010.
Many Louisiana Crisis Pregnancy Centers receive funding directed by the state from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a federal program intended to help families pay for food, housing, home energy, and child care. Louisiana put TANF funding toward the state-created Alternatives to Abortion Initiative (AAI) (now called the Pregnancy and Baby Care Initiative), which stated its purpose as providing a system of parenting support to low-income women who may be pregnant. The funding that AAI received reached the Crisis Pregnancy Centers without reporting requirements or strict oversight. This effectively diverted money from a federal welfare program aimed at promoting the health and wellbeing of low income families directly into keeping CPCs running.
Was the Louisiana state government funding lies?
Since there was little to no information on the efficacy of CPC’s in fulfilling the goals of TANF, Michelle and Lift Louisiana decided to take a deeper look. With the help of Shelbi Gatlin, an intern from Tulane Law School, we submitted public records requests to the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (which oversaw AAI) to discover where exactly the money was going. While DCFS handed over some records, they withheld those that would provide an answer regarding the effective performance of CPCs, despite the mandates of Louisiana Public Records law and the Freedom of Information Act.
“Inefficiency is a tactic sometimes. Inefficiency can make it difficult to scrutinize an agency’s actions.”
Even with gaps in the data, we uncovered clear misuses of government funding that betrayed the intentions of TANF. We saw that a majority of the money went towards administrative and advertisement costs rather than services that would assist low-income Louisiana families. In 2017-2018, 38% of the government funding went directly towards operating costs and management, vastly exceeding the ten percent permitted. Without government oversight of CPCs, there was little being done to address the misused funds being funneled into the pockets of those working at CPCs and toward religiously guided and motivated advertisement, spreading misinformation about contraception and abortion.
We knew there was an extreme lack of awareness regarding CPC’s and their sketchy use of state funding. With these records in hand, we created a report to spread awareness: Funding Lies - Louisiana’s Alternatives to Abortion Initiative. This report is a deep dive into where the money was intended to go, its misuse, and the resulting harm and neglect of low-income pregnant women and families.
Backlash on a Common Sense Study Resolution
In tandem with this report’s publication in spring 2022, Lift Louisiana worked closely with Representative Freeman of the 98th District to push state oversight over the Alternatives to Abortions Initiative and Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Using the findings in our CPC Report, we proposed a resolution for the Department of Child and Family Services to research the success and the outcomes of the AAI and CPCs themselves, and enforce oversight and further monitoring of the use of tax payers dollars for this program.
This study resolution, HCR 64, was proposed to the Committee on Health and Welfare. There, Michelle spoke with the committee and advocated for the value of this research. However, on the House floor in May, the proposal was met with extreme opposition, highly uncommon for a study resolution. When voicing his opposition to oversight being conducted, Representative Edmonds exclaimed, “We are a pro-life state!” It was clear that most of the Representatives preferred to ignore abuse of government funding, and would even defend malpractice in order to preserve their anti-abortion stance. Ultimately, the resolution was voted against by the Louisiana House of Representatives and no further actions were taken by the legislature to ensure oversight on this mismanaged initiative.
Despite the failure of HCR 64, the CPC Report released by Lift Louisiana in April of 2022 created a large impact across the state. It was able to put real numbers and data to something that was ambiguous. Because of Lift’s report, anti-UPC researcher Debra Rosen reached out to Lift Louisiana for help in developing and editing the Unlicensed Pregnancy Center Policy Playbook, a national guide to addressing and fixing the systematic issues that arise from UPCs across the United States. Our “Funding Lies” CPC Report has also been cited in various news articles and continued studies since its publishing, including this one from the Louisiana Illuminator.
“In the last couple years there has been more public attention put on on these centers and the state dollars that are going to funding them. I believe that the [Funding Lies] report played a role in that.”
Ultimately, Lift’s report and legislative advocacy led to greater awareness regarding this issue and the harm that CPCs create for many pregnant women in Louisiana. Through extensive research and an unwavering commitment to challenging unfair and mismanaged government initiatives, Lift Louisiana took action to expose lies and spur action to protect women and families across the state.
This work was made possible in part by funding from the Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights, the Tides Stronger Together Fund, and the Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity, a donor-advised fund of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.