State of Arkansas Has Not Disbursed $2M Appropriated for Moms in Need

Abortion, , ,

So far this fiscal year, the State of Arkansas has not disbursed any of the grant funding that lawmakers and Governor Sanders appropriated in April to support women with unplanned pregnancies.

Act 1006 of 2025 by the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee provides $2 million for grants to pregnancy help organizations — including pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies, and other charities that provide material support to women with unplanned pregnancies.

The State of Arkansas also can award funding to charities that promote infant and maternal wellness and reduce infant and maternal mortality by:

  • Providing nutritional information and/or nutritional counseling;
  • Providing prenatal vitamins;
  • Providing a list of prenatal medical care options;
  • Providing social, emotional, and/or material support; or
  • Providing referrals for WIC and community-based nutritional services, including food banks, food pantries, and food distribution centers.

Act 1006 makes it clear that grant money will not go to abortionists or their affiliates.

Under the measure, the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) is responsible for receiving grant applications and disbursing grant funds to charities that support women with unplanned pregnancies.

DFA opened the grant application window for pregnancy help organizations last summer, and DFA spokesperson Scott Hardin tells Family Council the department received a total of 39 applications. However, the department does not currently have a timeline for awarding grants to the pregnancy help organizations.

Since 2022, Family Council has worked with the Arkansas Legislature and the governor to secure funding every year for pregnancy resource centers. These state-funded grants have provided millions of dollars to charities in Arkansas.

By working through existing charities, Arkansas is able to support women and children without creating new government offices or bureaucracy.

The grants are optional. Pregnancy resource centers are not required to accept public tax dollars if they do not want to. But for those who receive grant money, the funding may make a tremendous difference.

Pro-lifers in Arkansas have made abortion illegal. We need to make abortion irrelevant and unthinkable as well. Supporting pregnancy help organizations is one way we can do that.

Pregnancy resource centers give women real options besides abortion, making it less likely they will travel out of state for abortion or order illegal abortion drugs online.

Arkansas’ Pregnancy Help Organization Grant Program provides millions of dollars for women and unborn children and their families. Family Council has been pleased to work with our friends in the Arkansas Legislature and the Governor’s Office to make this funding available, and we look forward to seeing it distributed to eligible charities in communities all across Arkansas.

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

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Less Than 1% of Assisted-Suicide Patients in Oregon Received a Psychiatric Evaluation Last Year

Bioethics, Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, , , ,

Data from the State of Oregon shows that last year less than 1% of patients who received a prescription for physician-assisted suicide were referred for a psychiatric evaluation.

Oregon’s 1997 “Death With Dignity Act” legalized physician-assisted suicide in the state, and since then more than 3,200 people have received prescriptions for lethal drugs.

More than 90% of the patients who asked about assisted suicide in Oregon said they were concerned about losing their autonomy because of their illness and nearly 70% expressed worries about losing their dignity. Most did not express concerns about controlling their pain.

However, doctors in Oregon rarely refer these patients for psychiatric help. Patients who are lonely and feel like they are losing control over their lives need counseling and support — not a prescription for deadly drugs.

Assisted suicide is devastating for families, and it robs patients of compassionate care.

Just like abortion, euthanasia and assisted-suicide are murder, and they violate the sanctity of human life.

Being pro-life means believing innocent human life is sacred from conception until natural death.

That’s why Family Council helped defeat a very bad bill in 2019 that would have let doctors prescribe lethal drugs to patients in Arkansas and two bad end-of-life bills in 2021. These were flawed measures that fundamentally disrespected the right to life.

You can read assisted suicide data from the Oregon Health Authority here.

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

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From One Clinic to Millions of Aborted Babies: Guest Column

Abortion, , , ,

On this day in 1916, the first birth control clinic in America was opened in Brooklyn, New York. Margaret Sanger, a nurse who worked among the poor on the Lower East Side, founded the Brownsville Clinic, which was later renamed after her. Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, the organization that would lead America into an era of child killing. An estimated 64.5 million babies have been killed since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand in 1973. Though the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, abortion had already, as Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis argued in their book, poisoned nearly every aspect of our culture. 

At the heart of Sanger’s views was a deep, insipient racism that continues to express in the work of the organization she founded. An avowed advocate of eugenics, Sanger famously launched “The Negro Project” to reduce or eliminate the Black population by encouraging sterilization and birth control. Though the context of her words is debated, Sanger once described the project by saying:  

We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members. 

Sanger’s legacy is straightforward. While African Americans make up about 14% of the U.S. population, as of 2021, 28% of all abortions are from black women, compared to 6.4% of white women. Black moms are somewhere between three and five times more likely to have an abortion than white moms. In New York City, thousands more black babies are aborted than are born each year. 

In the book How to be an Anti-Racist, which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 45 straight weeks, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi defined racism as anything that “produces or sustains racial inequity.” According to Kendi, intention does not matter. Only outcomes matter. 

Ironically, Kendi and other progressives center abortion rights in the cultural agenda for diversity, equality, and inclusion. However, according to his own (flawed) definition of racism, there is no more racist practice than abortion, and there is no cultural institution more racist than Planned Parenthood. Over 19 million more African-American people would be in the world today if not for legalized abortion and Planned Parenthood. Even more, Planned Parenthood’s business model directly targets black and other minority women. A 2017 Protecting Black Life study found that 22 of 25 abortion mega-centers were located within walking distance of black communities.  

The idea of “systemic” or “institutional racism” is controversial. Often, the concepts are used to subvert debate and condemn political opponents. However, it should not be theologically controversial to suggest that sin can take systemic and structural forms. There are examples throughout Scripture and human history. For example, prior to the flood, God described the evil of man as “great in the earth, and … every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5 ESV).  

Systems and structures can operate, with either intention or inertia, in ways that harm certain groups. This does not alleviate individual responsibility for evil. Rather, it is what happens because evil corrupts hearts and minds, people and nations, and individuals and systems.  

There is no greater example of systemic racism in an organization than Planned Parenthood. Proponents of eugenics, like Sanger, wanted wealthy, healthy and strong people to have more babies, and poor, sick, disabled, and minority people to have fewer (or no) babies. Of course, the women who walk into a Planned Parenthood today are not thinking about Margaret Sanger or her racist views. They are in crisis and looking for help. Many are in poverty. Way too many are being pressured to abort. Many are scared. Black mothers are nearly three times as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth as white mothers. All have been raised in a society in which abortion has been normalized.  

Years ago, Planned Parenthood of New York removed Sanger’s name from its clinic. They even appealed to the city to change the name “Margaret Sanger Square.” Distancing from Sanger does not lessen the evil of her views or life’s work. Nor does it redeem the racist foundations upon which Planned Parenthood has been built and still operates.

Copyright 2025 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.

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