Texas Didn’t Just Ban Abortions, It Also Helped Pregnant Women

Opinion   |   Kristan Hawkins and Chelsey Youman   |   Nov 8, 2021   |   7:42PM   |   Washington, DC

The abortion activists in President Joe Biden’s Administration are fighting Texas again in court, arguing that some Constitutional rights matter more than others.

Keeping in mind that abortion is never mentioned in the Constitution while protecting states’ rights was of great concern, those facts don’t have much weight for Biden’s Department of Justice. Meanwhile, many states across the country are preparing for the day after Roe v. Wade is struck down, including the great state of Texas, knowing that we must protect life in law as well as in service. The Lone Star State is excelling at both.

In recent years, Texas didn’t just change the narrative on how to enforce pro-life laws, they led the way in how to care for preborn life from the earliest days.

Texas successfully secured $100 million in public funding for programs and services that go to the root problems that drive abortion. That’s despite opposition from the abortion lobby, which worked against the interests of parenting women, trying to prevent them from engaging with nonviolent care facilities, accessing free parenting resources, or even knowing about the short- and long-term effects abortion could have on them should they elect to proceed with it.

Rather than celebrating the choice of some women to become mothers, corporate abortion railed against efforts to support young families with real financial investment.

And this hypocrisy is not relegated to just to Texas. In late September, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer line-item vetoed $16 million allocated to nonviolent pregnancy and parenting support systems because, according to her spokesperson, the programs did not adequately support abortion.

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Meanwhile, Texas blazed the trail for protecting life in law, coupling the $100 million state budget allocation to maternal and family resources through the Texas Alternatives to Abortion (A2A) Program with the Texas Heartbeat Law, reflecting the pro-life movement’s united strategy for abolishing abortion: To make abortion both unavailable and unthinkable. This requires understanding what drives demand for abortion and what cripples its supply.

As a participant in the A2A program, Human Coalition assesses and engages with the root causes of abortion every day, combatting the abortion industry’s lies that the child is the root problem and eliminating the child is the solution. The issues that drive women to seek an abortion — women we speak to by the hundreds each day — are chiefly financial instability, lack of support for achieving education and career goals with a baby, and relationship problems with (or with the absence of) the child’s father.

“Younger women,” according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, “often reported that they were unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to [other] dependents.” Notably, only a fraction of women enumerated concerns about their own health or that of their children as a driver toward abortion, and rape and incest victims together comprised less than 1.5% of respondents.

The women and families served by the Human Coalition request assistance with employment, transportation, childcare, housing, and finances. Last year alone, Human Coalition referred more than 13,000 clients for parenting classes, more than 9,000 for Medicaid, and more than 22,000 for SNAP and WIC food and nutrition benefits. According to A2A’s 2020 annual report, the program provided services “at a total of 171 locations across Texas,” with a total of more than a million services provided to more than 100,000 clients. That’s what empowerment looks like.

Also at work in Texas is the Students for Life of America’s Campaign for Abortion Free Cities that builds bridges between community services and people in need, along with our Standing with You initiative to serve women nationwide. As Vice News recently reported, Students for Life of America is literally going door-to-door in Texas (and in 20 major cities nationwide) to share with residents information about the nonviolent abortion alternatives available to pregnant women in their communities.

The abortion industry exploits women’s anxiety, marketing profitable abortions by suggesting that ending a child’s life will liberate her from worry without telling her that it doesn’t end the financial, relational, or personal struggles that drive pregnant women through the doors of Planned Parenthood. A woman alone remains alone the day after abortion, still without help, and now with her child. Just the way corporate abortion likes it.

More could be written with the Biden Administration’s recent obsession with ending Texas’ pro-life law while simultaneously taking parents to court. Consider that Mr. Biden’s DOJ is fighting to ensure that children’s lives are ended by abortion in Texas while working to arrest parents advocating for their children at school board meetings.

Uncle Sam, wearing the face of Mr. Biden, seems convinced that he alone can decide what will happen to children in America.

That nonsense will be addressed in elections to come. But today, many are gearing up to confront the false narrative of the abortion sales team that no one stands ready to help pregnant mothers. We are — as are many other pro-life heroes nationwide — and when Roe falls, we will be there to pick up the pieces.

LifeNews Note: Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America, with more than 1,250 groups on college, university, and high school campuses in all 50 states. Follow her @KristanHawkins or subscribe to her podcast, Explicitly Pro-Life. Chelsey Youman is Texas state Director and National Legislative Advisor with Human Coalition. SFLA and Human Coalition Action also have an amicus brief before the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson.