Helping needy or curbing abortion? Nebraska funnels millions in anti-poverty funds to crisis pregnancy centers

The State of Nebraska has spent nearly $5 million in the past three years, money earmarked for people in poverty, on a program that’s in part meant to deter people from getting abortions. 

The Nebraska Crisis Pregnancy Program, established in August 2021, funds a statewide network of centers to help people care for babies by “promoting childbirth, parenting and alternatives to termination of pregnancy.”

The state supports the program even as its spending on welfare cases – a primary use of the federal anti-poverty grant – dropped 24% in the past decade, the latest data shows.

State officials said the program is helping people in need, providing pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, counseling and food. In a little over two years, the program reached 9,000 people, progress reports show.

“These centers provide important cost-free services for pregnant women, many with limited financial means,” said Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Jeff Powell. 

But the Nebraska Parent Care Network, one of two grant recipients charged with distributing money to a statewide network of crisis pregnancy centers and other organizations, understood the program’s purpose differently.

“The Nebraska Crisis Pregnancy Program will be using taxpayer dollars to encourage childbirth instead of abortion as the natural outcome of a pregnancy,” its application reads. 

Nebraska Parent Care Network said it would measure success in part by declining abortion rates.

The crisis pregnancy program has a longstanding champion: State Auditor Mike Foley. As lieutenant governor, Foley helped create the program. Emails obtained from a public records request show that Foley, while state auditor, scheduled meetings, rewrote grant requests, advised spending and kept a close eye on progress.  

A Nebraska watchdog group and state lawmaker questioned Foley’s deep involvement. Foley said this is one of the hundreds of state programs he monitors daily, albeit one he supports.

“I want every woman in a difficult pregnancy situation to be aware that they are not alone and that crisis pregnancy centers can provide real assistance in their time of need,” he wrote in an email to Flatwater Free Press.

‘No agenda’

The Women’s Care Center of Omaha’s bright pink facade sticks out from the aging apartments and strip malls in midtown. Inside, its silent waiting room is a refuge from five lanes of traffic speeding by the corner of 38th and Dodge streets outside. 

When a reporter visited recently, a counselor ushered him into a side room and explained how they assist expecting mothers. When women don’t want to continue pregnancies, employees talk through the situation, the counselor said.

After a minute of conversation, a woman in red scrubs pulled the counselor from the room. The counselor returned with a business card for the center’s outreach coordinator, who did not return a phone call or email.

The Flatwater Free Press attempted to contact all 15 funding recipients – 12 crisis pregnancy centers, a food pantry with two locations and a homeless shelter. One crisis pregnancy center and the shelter responded.

“We just don’t comment to the press,” Dennis Waggoner, the director of finance and operations at Essential Pregnancy Services in northwest Omaha, said when the reporter visited recently. A TV behind a welcome desk showed monthly events including parenting classes, budgeting basics and a course called “Understanding your identity in Christ.”

In 2006, Foley, then a state senator, was the first to propose funding crisis pregnancy centers with federal poverty funds, he said. The program ran successfully until it was “quietly halted” in 2015, he said.

While lieutenant governor, Foley relaunched an “expanded and more comprehensive version” of the program at the direction of then-Gov. Pete Ricketts, Foley said.

The funding has been a “blessing” for Open Door Mission, said Candace Gregory, its president and CEO, allowing the Omaha homeless shelter to buy diapers, formula and educational materials they couldn’t otherwise afford. 

The topic of abortion has never been part of the funding, she said.

Anne Rohling, executive director of Bethlehem House, also said abortion was not discussed with the grant, which has been “instrumental” in helping the house shelter and aid vulnerable women. If a woman had those questions, its chaplain would counsel them. But most have made that decision before they reach Bethlehem House. 

“We’re obviously pro-life,” she said. “We’re really blessed that these women, even though they have had struggles, that they’ve chosen to give birth.”

Nebraska Children’s Home Society, one of two groups that won a grant to distribute the funding, “has no agenda,” said CEO Lana Temple-Plotz. 

The grant-funded programs help pregnant women and new parents manage stress and personal finances, she said. The organization did not reapply for the grant this year.

Others say crisis pregnancy centers’ opposition to abortion overshadows any support they provide.

“It’s not about helping the people who want to keep their pregnancies,” said Sandy Griffin, a committee chair at Nebraska Abortion Resources, which provides financial support to people seeking an abortion. “It’s about trying to do everything in their power to dissuade someone from seeking an abortion.” 

An Associated Press investigation found that between 2010 and 2022, 13 states funded crisis pregnancy centers with $495 million of taxpayer money. A recent ProPublica and CBS investigation found a program in Texas, which spends $140 million annually, has “few safeguards and is riddled with waste.”

In its application, the Nebraska Parent Care Network cited its close ties to Texas’ program, noting that it adopted the same software used in Texas. The software’s purpose, the application said, is “promoting childbirth in lieu of abortion.”

DHHS does monthly audits of the program’s administrators, said the department spokesman, though it doesn’t track how the money is spent once it’s distributed to centers.

Using poverty funds to fund crisis pregnancy centers seems like an ill-advised way to combat poverty, said Diane Amdor, an attorney in Nebraska Appleseed’s economic justice program. 

“They have a very targeted, and in my mind, manipulative operating value of trying to convince people not to seek out one particular type of health care that may be an option to them,” she said. “And I think that they do that in a coercive way.”

‘Love and Support’

Nebraska Parent Care Network, which distributes the crisis pregnancy funds statewide, has made clear it intends to support anti-abortion work. 

In its application, the nonprofit hypothesized about a woman driving to a abortion clinic but then seeing a “brightly decorated” crisis pregnancy center nearby – one much like the pink Omaha Women’s Center building at 38th and Dodge.

“If she followed her instinct she would enter a wonderfully warm and inviting environment where she would immediately be welcomed and showered with love and support,” the application reads.

Christopher Jay, Nebraska Parent Care Network’s executive director, declined to answer questions.

Currently only two clinics in Nebraska provide elective abortions — Planned Parenthood in Omaha and Clinics for Abortion & Reproductive Excellence in Bellevue. Next door to each is a crisis pregnancy center.

Centers also pay to appear above the clinics in online searches for “Omaha pregnancy services.” More than $300,000 of the crisis pregnancy program’s funds went to marketing, which includes Google and social media ads.

What people find on centers’ websites can be misleading, according to ACLU of Nebraska. Of the 16 it analyzed, many had inaccurate information about abortion, said researcher Scout Richters.

Griffin said these centers often take guidance from larger faith-based networks. Calls made by Flatwater Free Press to several centers resulted in conversations with operators in other states.

The clothes, food, car seats and diapers crisis pregnancy centers provide are “incredible,” said Dr. Mary Kinyoun, an OBGYN at Nebraska Medicine.

What worries her is that women who go there may not receive the right medical care. About 2% of pregnancies become ectopic. Catching these potentially deadly complications are tough, even for hospitals’ highly-trained, licensed staff, she said.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says such centers delay access to legitimate care, spread misinformation and target vulnerable people.

“I see harm coming out of these places,” Kinyoun said of Nebraska funding crisis pregnancy centers, “and so I have concerns.”

Analysis of the program’s invoices show $1 million went to pay Nebraska Childrens’ Home Society and Nebraska Parent Care Network, which dole out the grants. The rest was mostly awarded to centers. The top three — Assure Women’s Center and Essential Pregnancy Services in the Omaha area, as well the Women’s Care Center of Lincoln — were awarded a combined $2.2 million. 

Recently the state added $1.5 million in state funding to provide things like counseling services and cribs not covered by the initial funding. A new tax credit for donations to these centers could also cost the state $1.5 million by 2027.

‘Raises Serious Questions’

Foley has spent ample time focused on the success of the Nebraska Crisis Pregnancy Program – even after he was reelected as Nebraska’s top watchdog on public spending.

Emails show he has helped solve problems, like when the federal government questioned whether the program met spending requirements for the anti-poverty grant, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. 

“If the [federal government] threatens a ‘claw-back’, such funds would presumably come from unspent TANF dollars of which we have plenty,” he wrote in a March 2023 email.

In July 2023, Foley grew concerned one contractor was trying to “hog more than its fair share.” He recommended a review and adjustment before more grants were awarded.

Foley’s involvement doesn’t break state conflict of interest laws for public officials, said Gavin Geis, executive director of watchdog group Common Cause Nebraska. But “the Auditor’s use of his time, expertise and connections to help a single organization raises serious questions about whether he is using taxpayer funds, which pay his salary, appropriately,” Geis said. 

Foley said his role with the Nebraska Crisis Pregnancy Program doesn’t differ from oversight and assistance his office provides hundreds of state programs. He noted the program is a small fraction of the $5 billion in federal funding the state receives annually.

“I simply want the taxpayer’s hard-earned money to be respected and spent properly and efficiently,” he wrote.

Sen. Danielle Conrad, a Democrat from Lincoln, said while Foley is one of the best auditors the state has had, the emails raise questions.

“To have the watchdog of state government taking a pet project under his wing, that is a bit strange,” she said, “because perhaps it limits his ability to be impartial in addressing any potential waste, fraud and abuse in those programs.”

The program hasn’t had enough of that attention said, Joanna Murray, executive director of Nebraska Family Planning. Her organization funds a network of medical clinics that provide all-options pregnancy counseling. After Nebraska imposed a 12-week abortion ban, the window to get people with unplanned pregnancies  information is tighter. Funding crisis pregnancy centers makes it harder to ensure that information is accurate, she said.

“I wonder,” she said, “how many people recognize what their tax dollars are supporting.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story referred to Mariel Harding as Nebraska Family Planning’s reproductive and sexual health care clinical educator. She is the group’s senior director of programs & initiatives.