Anti-abortion lawmakers and right-to-lifers are making disaster being pregnant facilities a precedence in 2024 messaging.
The theme for this yr’s annual March for Life and the companion laws anti-abortion lawmakers superior in Congress seeks to spin the nationwide actuality post-Dobbs whereas making one factor clear: The anti-abortion motion is in disaster communications mode.
The annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., brings disparate aspects and members of the anti-abortion motion collectively and establishes the motion’s collective public message for the yr.
Finally yr’s “Subsequent Steps” march, the primary because the U.S. Supreme Courtroom reversed Roe v. Wade, audio system declared the motion wouldn’t cease till abortion was banned throughout the nation, and aggressively dismissed warnings from medical consultants that abortion bans would result in critically in poor health pregnant sufferers struggling extreme damage and hurt whereas being denied medical care.
This yr’s march featured a unique message. With every day experiences of horrific abortion-ban accidents, polls repeatedly displaying that almost all Individuals oppose abortion bans, and the political actuality that abortion rights have gained in each state the place they’ve been on the poll, anti-abortion strategists will not be wanting to remind the general public of their plans to criminalize all abortion, or of the implications.
As an alternative, the theme for this yr’s March for Life was “Professional-life: With Each Lady, For Each Baby,” and centered anti-abortion disaster being pregnant facilities (CPCs) as its rallying cry.
In response to a long time of experiences by students, advocacy teams, watchdogs and investigative reporters, disaster being pregnant facilities are anti-abortion organizations that search to succeed in low-income individuals dealing with unintended pregnancies to forestall them from accessing abortion and contraception, utilizing misleading and coercive ways and medical disinformation, and misleadingly presenting themselves as medical services, regardless of being exempt from regulatory, licensure, and credentialing oversight that apply to healthcare services.
March for Life president Jeanne Mancini advised this yr’s individuals it’s a “false narrative that the pro-life motion ignores infants after delivery.”
Mancini continued, “Being pregnant care facilities and maternity houses throughout the nation exist to supply assist for girls dealing with surprising pregnancies.”
Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), a featured speaker on the rally, praised two CPC payments that the Home GOP convention handed a day earlier, however didn’t define a roadmap or coverage priorities for the ‘pro-life’ motion this yr. Johnson did echo the rally’s theme that CPCs exist “to serve and help pregnant girls”—messaging that was additionally entrance and middle as congressional Republicans fast-tracked the 2 CPC payments within the lead-up to the Jan. 19 rally.
Messaging concerning the CPC business is a public relations technique that the broader anti-abortion motion makes use of in occasions of political disaster and dangerous publicity.
The Pregnant College students Proper Act: Mandating Faculties Promote CPCs
The primary invoice, referred to as the Pregnant College students Rights Act (H.R. 6914) was launched on Jan. 5, 2024, by Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa). It opens with an unsubstantiated “discovering” that “feminine college students enrolled at establishments of upper schooling and experiencing an unplanned being pregnant might face strain that their solely choice is to obtain an abortion or danger tutorial failure.” The invoice would require faculties and universities to tell feminine college students of their rights to instructional lodging for being pregnant and childbirth underneath Title IX and to disseminate details about “assets on campus and locally that exist to assist a pregnant pupil in carrying the newborn to time period.”
Briefly, the laws would mandate faculties promote anti-abortion disaster being pregnant facilities to college students; CPC business leaders have been constructing campus outreach methods and infrastructure to assist a coverage like HR 6914 since 2012. The invoice wouldn’t require college students be offered details about contraception or abortion.
On Jan. 18, the day earlier than the march, the Home handed HR 6914 by a vote of 212-207, with no Democrats in favor.
The Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Girls and Households Act Will Not Really Assist Households
The second invoice, the Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Girls and Households Act (H.R. 6918), was launched on Jan. 9, 2024, by Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.) and backed by anti-abortion organizations and the U.S. Convention of Bishops. The invoice would block a proposed Biden administration rule that “discriminates” towards disaster being pregnant facilities by prohibiting them from persevering with to obtain federal funds from the Short-term Help for Needy Households (TANF), a program primarily meant to supply money help for poor households with kids.
Since Roe was overturned in 2022, no less than 16 states have directed greater than $250 million in taxpayer funds to CPCs, together with from the TANF program. The Home additionally handed HR 6918 the day earlier than the March for Life by a vote of 214-208 alongside strict get together strains.
Neither invoice has an opportunity of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate.
In search of to Change the Dialog of Hurt Brought on by Abortion Bans
The anti-choice motion’s resolution to focus their messaging on CPCs earlier this month—each within the streets of Washington and the halls of Congress—in response to mounting proof that abortion bans trigger girls extreme harms displays the motion’s longtime public relations technique for navigating political obstacles and dangerous publicity.
It’s effectively documented, for instance, that the anti-abortion motion elevated CPCs within the Nineties in response to the election of Invoice Clinton, the failure of the U.S. Supreme Courtroom to overturn Roe in Deliberate Parenthood v. Casey, and dangerous publicity related to anti-abortion violence.
In different phrases, one of many features the CPC business serves for the broader anti-abortion motion is to supply an alternate “love them each” narrative to melt adverse public notion of the motion.
So, with story after harrowing story rising concerning the impression abortion bans are having on the well being and very lives of girls across the nation, Republicans are as soon as once more selling CPCs to navigate a mounting backlash towards the Dobbs overturn of the federal proper to abortion and the state abortion bans enacted in its wake.
[Republicans] have constantly undermined entry to contraception, defunded on-campus childcare, and excluded data on important abortion care from the invoice they need us to vote for.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)
Rep. Fischbach echoed this messaging in her public assertion introducing the “Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Girls and Households Act,” asserting that CPCs “assist girls who’re selecting life,” and that conservatives “need to guarantee these mothers are supported all through their being pregnant and empowered to boost their households.”
Throughout a four-hour listening to concerning the invoice, Republicans additional echoed this message whereas additionally claiming that CPCs are saving taxpayer {dollars}, enhancing well being outcomes for moms and youngsters, and offering high quality care in rural maternal care deserts.
There is no such thing as a proof to assist any of those claims. Furthermore, the assertion that CPCs exist to assist pregnant girls and their households instantly contradicts the motion’s personal reporting on how CPCs are rising spending on promoting to succeed in “abortion-minded girls” submit Dobbs, demonstrating that the CPC business’s major objective stays the identical because it has all the time been: to forestall girls from accessing abortion.
Democrats blasted their GOP colleagues final week for spending treasured congressional time on payments that have been “deliberately designed to mislead, with biased and inaccurate data, and to disgrace those that search abortion care.”
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) stated, “Simply as authorities funding was set to run out, and with allies in Israel and Ukraine ready on essential nationwide safety help, Washington Republicans are voting to restrict school college students’ entry to complete details about girls’s reproductive well being and to divert Short-term Help for Needy Households funds towards dangerous anti-abortion propaganda. It’s nothing in need of appalling.”
Rep Ayana Pressley (D-MA) referred to as out Republicans for “utilizing our pregnant college students as their pawns. … The younger girl in school making the life-changing resolution on when and tips on how to begin a household deserves complete and medically correct data.”
Pressley charged Republicans with “taking part in with individuals’s lives as a substitute of making an attempt to avoid wasting and alter and enhance them … They’ve constantly undermined entry to contraception, defunded on-campus childcare, and excluded data on important abortion care from the invoice they need us to vote for.”
Trump and the Anti-Abortion Motion
In the meantime, as congressional Republicans and March for Life spokespeople centered their messaging on selling CPCs, the Nationwide Proper to Life Committee continued pushing its mannequin “Put up-Roe Abortion Legislation” to permit for civil actions towards individuals or entities that violate abortion legal guidelines.
Now, conservative operatives are getting ready to implement their “Challenge 2025” blueprint for a subsequent Trump administration, to make use of government and federal powers to enact nationwide abortion and contraception restrictions, the CDC to extend abortion surveillance; and the 150-year-old regulation Comstock Act to criminalize the mailing of something that might be used to facilitate an abortion.
It’s time for everybody watching the post-Dobbs public well being disaster to grasp that messaging concerning the CPC business is a public relations technique that the broader anti-abortion motion makes use of in occasions of political disaster and dangerous publicity. The motion’s objective stays the identical: to ban and criminalize all abortion, nationwide.
Up subsequent:
U.S. democracy is at a harmful inflection level—from the demise of abortion rights, to a scarcity of pay fairness and parental depart, to skyrocketing maternal mortality, and assaults on trans well being. Left unchecked, these crises will result in wider gaps in political participation and illustration. For 50 years, Ms. has been forging feminist journalism—reporting, rebelling and truth-telling from the front-lines, championing the Equal Rights Modification, and centering the tales of these most impacted. With all that’s at stake for equality, we’re redoubling our dedication for the following 50 years. In flip, we want your assist, Assist Ms. as we speak with a donation—any quantity that’s significant to you. For as little as $5 every month, you’ll obtain the print journal together with our e-newsletters, motion alerts, and invites to Ms. Studios occasions and podcasts. We’re grateful in your loyalty and ferocity.
