The State of Arkansas has begun accepting grant applications from pro-life pregnancy help organizations. The grants are part of the state’s 2023 Pregnancy Help Organizations Grant Program for the 2023-2024 budget cycle.
In April, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 622 of 2023 authorizing $1 million in state-funded grants for crisis pregnancy centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies, and social services agencies that provide material support to women with unplanned pregnancies.
Under Act 622, the Department of Finance and Administration distributes this grant funding to eligible organizations that provide women and families with alternatives to abortion.
This $1 million in grant funding will help offer women actual pro-life assistance in the face of an unexpected pregnancy.
Since the 2022 Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade, state legislatures around the country have ramped up state funding for pregnancy help organizations.
For example, Ohio recently raised its state budget for pregnancy resource centers to $14 million per biennium.
In Tennessee, legislators appropriated $20 million for pro-life organizations that provide alternatives to abortion. Florida’s state budget allocates $30 million pregnancy help organizations.
The Texas Legislature budgets $50 million per year to its abortion alternatives program.
And Kansas — where some 405 women from Arkansas had abortions in 2022 — will provide $2 million to pregnancy centers.
In June the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration finished awarding $1 million in grant funds to pregnancy help organizations as part of the 2022-2023 budget cycle. Now the state is preparing to award another million dollars by June 30, 2024.
Now that Roe v. Wade has been reversed and abortion is generally prohibited in Arkansas except to save the life of the mother, the state needs to take steps to make abortion unthinkable and unnecessary. That is what this grant funding will help do.
This grant money will support women and families in Arkansas, and it will help build a culture of life in our state. That’s something to celebrate.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
