The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
New data studying state funding for anti-abortion centers showed Ohio provided more than $22 million to groups in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturned national abortion rights.
Since 2013, the state has fed more than $35.5 million to anti-abortion funding, according to Equity Forward’s newest study of state-by-state funding for centers who are also called “crisis pregnancy centers,” and are often religiously affiliated facilities that provide services like ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, but have also reportedly provided outdated or debunked information about pregnancy.
The organization looked at 23 states allocating public dollars to anti-abortion centers since 1995, the year they say had “the first verifiable instance of funding,” and up to July 23 of this year.
“AACs use public dollars to fund tactics and programs that not only aim to delay, deceive and discourage those in search of abortion care but also act as an unnecessary barrier to pregnant people looking for other medical care and support services,” the report stated.
In 22 states, the analysis found that more than $489 million has been allocated to anti-abortion centers since Dobbs was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.
Ohio has sent $35,583,939 to facilities in the state, with that total including public funding going to “Alternative to Abortion programs,” funding from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and “other miscellaneous sources,” the study stated. Specifically, $17.8 million from the TANF program went to centers since 2013, according to Equity Forward. The study reported a total of nearly $200 million in TANF funds used for anti-abortion centers in nine states.
TANF is a program designed to “help low-income families with children achieve economic self-sufficiency,” according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, though states have discretion when it comes to using the federal funding, along with the state contribution to the fund.
As part of Gov. Mike DeWine’s Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives received $13.5 million for fiscal year 2024 in TANF Block Grant earmarks as part of the most recent state operating budget and funds grants through TANF. According to the office’s website, the purposes of TANF include preventing or reducing “the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies,” encouraging the “formation and maintenance of two-parent families” and ending the “dependence of parents in need on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work and marriage.
The state also has a Parenting and Pregnancy Program through the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, for which $14 million was set aside in the last budget, $7 million per fiscal year, according to the Legislative Service Commission’s breakdown of the state budget.
Organizations that receive money through the PPP must “promote childbirth, rather than abortion, through counseling and other services, including parenting and adoption support,” according to the state. Those entities are expressly banned from being “involved in or associated with any abortion activities, including providing abortion counseling or referrals to abortion clinics, performing abortion-related medical procedures, or engaging in pro-abortion advertising.”
The state is still funding entities in this way despite a ballot initiative that constitutionalized reproductive rights including abortion last year, with the approval of 57% of voters. A spokesperson for DeWine has been asked multiple times if language would be changing within the PPP to reflect the language of the amendment, but he has yet to give a response.
Ohio legislation in the last year seeks to further the support of anti-abortion groups, through possible tax credits, as another Republican billseeks to keep state funds from benefitting abortion-related services.
It’s not clear whether those bills will succeed during this General Assembly, which ends in December, but they could be reintroduced next year even if they fail to see a vote or passage.
