Georgia lawmakers have approved state funding of up to $2 millon for unlicensed crisis pregnancy centers, dubbed “fake abortion clinics” by some advocates.
The bill, which specifies that abortion care should not be mentioned when discussing healthcare options for pregnant women, will now go before Governor Nathan Deal for his signature.
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are non-medical facilities that seek to counsel women out of having abortions. Many of these clinics have confusing names and advertising that suggest they provide abortion services, and others provide misleading medical information to discourage women from having abortions.
Often counselors will tell women that condoms are ineffective, that they will be unable to get pregnant again if they have an abortion, and that abortion and birth control cause cancer. There are more than 4,000 CPCs in the US and at least 12 states fund CPCs directly.
State Senator Renee Unterman, the bill’s sponsor and the chair of the state senate’s Health and Human Services committee, told her colleagues before their vote on Thursday that crisis pregnancy centers “do a fabulous job because they offer alternative services other than abortion” and that “[i]t’s a better thing for people to have better decisions.” Unterman has said that the these centers provide positive alternatives to abortion and that they help reduce the number of abortions performed in the state through the ultrasounds and counseling they provide.
During debates on the bill, only female representatives spoke in opposition to its passage.
“If you want to decrease abortion, then let’s invest $2 million in sex ed,” state representative Stacy Evans said on the statehouse floor Friday.