Providing Honest Care: Orienting Pregnancy and Family Support Services Away from Crisis Pregnancy Centers

By: Georgia Jensen

Edited By: Ruby McNeil

Photo by Laura Stewart/MEDILL

In July 2024, ProPublica and CBS News published an exposé revealing how poor oversight by the state of Texas allowed a network of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to abuse over $100 million in state funds. Under Thriving Texas Families, a program initially designed to reduce the number of abortions that occur in the state and “promote childbirth” by providing support to pregnant women, subcontractors instead used money provided by the state to finance unrelated business ventures like opening smoke shops and building new facilities (“Thriving Texas Families”; Jaramillo et al., 2024). While the state has since begun to adopt stricter oversight policies to prevent future abuse (Jaramillo and Kohler, 2025), pregnant people and their families would be better served by redirecting this funding toward programs that improve access to family planning services, maternal and pregnancy care, food and housing security, and childcare.

Since 2005, Texas has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which are unlicensed and often religiously-affiliated organizations that claim to offer prenatal and pregnancy support. Known first as “Alternatives to Abortion,” its original funding allocation was $5 million, taken entirely from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which is meant to help low-income families with children “achieve economic security and stability” (“Temporary Assistance for Needy Families”). Funding increased only gradually until the Dobbs decision overturned the right to an abortion, when it quickly ballooned to over $100 million per biennium (Dixon et al., 2024). As of the 2026-2027 fiscal year, Texas has allocated $180 million to Thriving Texas Families (Alam, 2025). This far exceeds funding from any other state by hundreds of millions of dollars in total (Kruesi, 2022; Luthra, 2024). In Texas and across the nation, public funds for CPCs have been diverted from programs dedicated to other issues, such as family planning, COVID relief, and even emergency relief (Dixon et al., 2024; Rabinovitz, 2024). As Texas continues to pour unprecedented sums into this program, it is worth questioning whether there may be more effective uses for these funds.

Crisis pregnancy centers aim to discourage people from obtaining abortions, often using deceptive practices to do so. As a pending Supreme Court case highlights, many CPCs advertise themselves as medical clinics despite the fact that most of their volunteers have no specialized training (First Choice Women’s Resource Center v. Platkin; Montoya et al., 2022). They offer free ultrasounds and pregnancy tests as a part of their campaign to appeal to women of lower socioeconomic status, whom they consider to be the most “abortion-minded” (Montoya et al., 2024). CPCs are known to position themselves near abortion clinics and hide their anti-abortion mission to attract people seeking abortions (Thomsen et al., 2022; Montoya et al., 2024). Evidence indicates that 71% of CPCs employ misleading practices, including advancing false claims linking abortion to other diseases and promoting the potentially dangerous procedure “abortion reversal”, the unproven method of taking progesterone to continue a pregnancy after medication abortion (“Profiting From Deceit”, 2023).

Once they procure clients, CPCs often lie to them about their gestational ages in ways that distort clients’ perceptions of their legal options for obtaining an abortion. This can be dangerous for the provision of prenatal care and identification of pregnancy complications (Bryant and Swartz, 2018). Moreover, while Texas justifies state funding of CPCs on the grounds that they provide important resources like diapers to needy families, these centers often condition the provision of those resources on participation in religious seminars (Montoya et al., 2022). This presents an ethical issue because representatives of the state are, in effect, pressuring vulnerable families into ideological or faith-based engagement. Finally, clients, under the mistaken assumption that CPCs are legitimate medical facilities, often provide them with sensitive medical or personal information which the CPCs are not bound to protect, since they are unlicensed and thus do not fall under HIPAA (Bryant and Swartz, 2018). Women’s rights groups like The Alliance have warned that, in the post-Roe age, data collected by CPCs could be used in pregnancy- and abortion-related prosecutions (“Urgent Brief”, 2022). These deceptive and coercive practices raise substantial concerns about the appropriateness of channeling public funds to CPCs, particularly in place of comparable support for reproductive healthcare and anti-poverty measures.

In the absence of legal abortion access in the state of Texas, it is more important now than ever to provide low-income families with the resources they need to care for their health and their families. Due to their proven negligence, corruption, and coercive practices, crisis pregnancy centers are not a worthy investment in support of this mission, but the amount of funds they receive could be transformative if dedicated to other programs. For example, evidence has shown that health outcomes can be improved by expanding income eligibility for health insurance under the Medicaid program (“2023 Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap”). Notably, Texas is one of only a few states that continues to forgo Medicaid expansion, which would allow low-income individuals to access preventive, prenatal, maternal, and birth care. In the past, Texas lost federal funds dedicated to women’s health as a result of its categorical exclusion of organizations affiliated with abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood (Dixon et al., 2024). Redirecting funding away from exclusionary programs like Thriving Texas Families and toward Medicaid expansion could lead to a renewal of those funds, further broadening the impact of such efforts (Dixon et al., 2024).

While exploitative in practice, crisis pregnancy centers are right to focus on low-income individuals. Poverty is a major issue affecting young people who might otherwise obtain abortions. Not only is poverty the most common reason behind an individual’s decision to seek an abortion, but women who are denied abortions are also more likely to experience years of economic hardship and insecurity (Foster et al., 2022). Thus, improving support for low-income women and families in Texas after Dobbs necessitates an expansion of anti-poverty measures. These can be state-led, such as state-subsidized housing or state-funded childcare assistance (“2025 Policy Impact”; “We Are NOT OK”, 2024; Ruiz, 2025), or community-level initiatives like food pantries (Doud, 2025). Regardless, tackling the underlying issue leading young people to seek out CPC services would be more effective than sustaining programs that provide downstream services with stipulations.

Furthermore, federal funds like TANF should go toward programs that provide resources to needy families without conditions, particularly if those conditions are religious in nature. Rather than subcontracting crisis pregnancy centers to provide material support like diapers, clothes, and formula, Texas should invest those funds into community organizations that provide the same goods, such as Hope Supply Co. in Dallas, which currently receives no state funding (“2024 Annual Report”). Redirecting funding to such local providers would ensure that families receive essential assistance without coercive or misleading programming, ideological requirements, or the gaps in oversight that characterize the current CPC system.

As it stands, the misuse of state funds by crisis pregnancy centers suggests their lack of commitment to helping the communities they claim to serve, calling into question the utility of continuing to fund them (Jaramillo et al., 2024). Redirecting this money toward evidence-based programs like Medicaid expansion, housing assistance, or childcare subsidies would more directly support the health, autonomy, and economic stability of pregnant people and families. By reorienting state investment away from ideologically-driven organizations with a record of deception and toward services that genuinely meet Texans’ needs, the state could begin to repair the structural gaps that drive individuals to CPCs in the first place. Ultimately, if Texas is committed to improving maternal and child well-being in a post-Roe landscape, its resources must follow interventions that are transparent, accountable, and effective.

The views expressed in this publication are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Rice Journal of Public Policy, its staff, or its Editorial Board.

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