US lawmakers push anti-discrimination bill to protect pregnancy resource centers

WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- The language of the latest incarnation of the Let Pregnancy Centers Serve Act, a bill aimed at protecting more than 2,700 pregnancy resource centers nationwide from federal and state interference, is not radically different than the language of the one introduced in Congress last year.

But the expectations for H.R. 2226 are certainly different. Last year's bill was sidelined in committee, with no expectation that President Joe Biden would sign it into law. This year with President Donald Trump -- described by Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., as "the most pro-life president we've had in history" -- the bill's sponsors are confident the anti-discrimination bill will be signed into law after passage.

Tenney, along with Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, and Rep. Michelle Fischbach, R-Minn., spoke at a March 24 press conference on Capitol Hill.

Smith introduced the new bill on March 18.

Like the earlier bill, the act says states could use Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and other federal grant funds for pregnancy resource centers without government interference. In addition, the law would let pregnancy centers sue if facing what the operators believe is federal discrimination.

TANF funds, in the form of federal block grants to states, are designated to support low-income families, fund job training and build self-sufficiency. The TANF program supports nearly 850,000 families, including 1.5 million children and 560,000 adults, on average each month.

In the last fiscal year, the federal budget included $16.5 billion for the grants -- the amount has remained the same since 1996, losing about 40% of its original real value due to inflation.

The new bill "has broader language" on TANF funds, Smith said.

In 2023, the Biden administration proposed a rule to restrict states from using TANF funds for pregnancy centers. The Department of Health and Human Services withdrew the proposal after pushback from the House and days before Trump's inauguration.

Pregnancy resource centers, many of them receiving Catholic funding, do not perform abortions, refer women to abortions or provide abortion-inducing drugs, and their counseling discusses possible after-effects of the procedure.

At the press conference, Smith praised the pregnancy resource centers with which he was familiar for advising pregnant women "in a gentle and nonjudgmental way."

In a separate statement March 24, Smith said that "state governments like New Jersey pander to abortion activists by targeting pregnancy resource centers in a coordinated effort to intimidate the front-line volunteers and licensed medical professionals providing this critical support to mothers in need and their unborn baby boys and girls."

In New York, "we have a very aggressive government that is very, very pro-abortion," Tenney said at the press conference. Opponents of the centers, she said, "keep calling us anti-choice. They are not pro-choice. They are anti-life."

"We in the pro-life movement understand the challenges new mothers face," said Fischbach. The centers are there "for children, unborn babies and their mothers."

Pregnancy resource centers have often been at the center of legislation designed to hobble them.

In December 2023, a federal judge in Illinois issued a permanent injunction against a state law there, the Deceptive Practices of Limited Services Pregnancy Centers Act. Under the injunction, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul agreed not to enforce the law, which declared both advertising and counseling by the centers, including sidewalk counseling, to be a "deceptive business practice." Violation would have imposed fines of up to $50,000.

In a statement, Thomas Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, had called the Illinois bill "an absolute weaponization of government that unfairly and unconstitutionally targeted pregnancy centers simply because they refused to refer for or perform abortions."