Updated: Arkansas Risks Lagging Behind Other States on Pregnancy Center Funding

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Above: On April 4, 2023, lawmakers passed a measure authorizing $1 million in funding for grants to pregnancy help organizations in the state.

Last year, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 622 of 2023 renewing the state’s annual funding for pregnancy help organizations.

Under Act 622, the Department of Finance and Administration will distribute $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 between now and June 30, 2024.

This grant funding provides women and families with alternatives to abortion.

To date, the State of Arkansas has successfully distributed nearly half of this funding to pregnancy help organizations.

While this funding is good, Arkansas actually runs the risk of lagging behind other states when it comes to funding alternatives to abortion.

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:

In Tennessee, legislators have appropriated $20 million for pro-life organizations that provide alternatives to abortion.

Florida’s state budget allocates at least $25 million for pregnancy help organizations.

The Texas Legislature now budgets $70 million per year for its abortion alternatives program.

And Kansas—where some 405 women from Arkansas had abortions in 2022—provides $2 million to pregnancy centers.

In terms of per capita spending, Arkansas would need to budget approximately $2.1 million for alternatives to abortion to be on par with Kansas and $7.1 million to be equivalent with Texas.

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. Public grant funding for pregnancy help organizations does that.

That is why Family Council intends to be back at the state capitol when lawmakers convene next week to work for an even larger appropriation that will provide funding for Arkansas’ pregnancy centers in the coming fiscal year.

This grant funding literally is an investment in Arkansas’ future generations.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

This article has been updated to better reflect the per capita amounts Arkansas would need to allocate to provide funding comparable to Texas and Kansas.

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Family Council Intends to Support Funding for Pregnancy Centers at State Legislature

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The Arkansas Legislature will convene for its budget session on April 10, and Family Council is gearing up to be there in support of good, pro-life efforts in the state.

Now that abortion is mostly prohibited, we need to make it irrelevant and unthinkable.

That’s why in 2022 we worked with the legislature and the governor to secure $1 million in funding for pregnancy centers. We did the same in 2023.

This funding has gone to good organizations across the state that provide women and families with real assistance in the face of an unplanned pregnancy.

We intend to be back at the state capitol in April to work for an even larger appropriation that will provide funding for these centers in the coming fiscal year.

More than 50 pregnancy help organizations are serving thousands of women in Arkansas. We are glad to help these organizations do even more.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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FDA’s Abortion Drug Policies Put Women “at Far Greater Risk” of Deadly Complication

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Abortion drugs like RU-486 are on the rise in America, and the FDA has taken steps to relax its safety policies regarding the drugs — putting women and unborn children at risk.

When the FDA first approved RU-486 in 2000, a woman seeking a drug-induced abortion was required to visit the doctor three times — which included an initial medical evaluation and follow-up appointments to ensure that the woman did not experience health complications.

In 2016, that number of visits was reduced from three to one.

Then in 2021, the FDA removed the in-person visit with a doctor altogether — making it possible to obtain RU-486 at a pharmacy or through the mail without a medical exam or sonogram.

The FDA now faces lawsuits arguing the administration’s abortion drug policies have undermined public health and safety.

In a recent editorial to the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Christina Francis from the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists notes that, “Under the FDA’s relaxed protocols, women are at far greater risk of a deadly ectopic pregnancy.”

Dr. Francis describes risk as a federal courts weigh the FDA’s policy changes, writing,

The FDA, whose principal purview is safety, discounted the need to check for ectopic pregnancies when it revised its protocols for dispensing mifepristone, the primary drug used in a chemical abortion. Why should this matter? Because when a woman has an ectopic pregnancy but mistakes its symptoms for normal drug side effects, she will spend precious minutes or hours at home, which could be the difference between life and death. . . .

A woman today can acquire mifepristone with no screening for an ectopic pregnancy, and she may not even realize she has one until it is a full-blown medical emergency. During oral arguments before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the lawyer representing the FDA was asked how ectopic pregnancy could be ruled out without any kind of medical examination. She replied that you can ask questions like, ‘Are you experiencing shoulder pain?’ If a woman with an ectopic pregnancy is experiencing shoulder pain, she belongs on an operating table and may be within an hour from death.

This simply further goes to show that while abortion drugs end the lives of unborn children, they also carry serious health risks for women.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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