You work hard and pay your taxes, often unaware of how these tax dollars are spent. But here’s a doozy.
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You work hard and pay your taxes, often unaware of how these tax dollars are spent. But here’s a doozy. This year, Pennsylvania will dole out more than $7 million of your tax dollars to an anti-abortion group that funds fake crisis pregnancy centers (Philadelphia Inquirer, August 4, 2022).
What are fake crisis pregnancy centers, you ask?
They are phony clinics that lure in vulnerable women by offering free pregnancy tests, diapers, other baby items, and “counseling.” This “counseling” usually involves delaying, scaring, and shaming women who may be considering abortion. Typically run by religious groups, the centers spread harmful misinformation about the safety of abortions like telling women that abortion will lead to breast cancer. It won’t.
Unsurprisingly, there's little oversight. Pennsylvania hands over your tax dollars, free and clear, to a company called Real Alternatives which then gives the cash to the fake centers. To date, Pennsylvania has given Real Alternatives more than $130 million of your money. (Real Alternatives’ dicey financial practices got them into trouble with Pennsylvania’s auditor general, but that's for another letter). This giveaway began under an anti-abortion, Democratic governor in the 1990s and continues to this day. Republicans, who have held the majority in Pennsylvania’s legislature nearly every year since then, continue the practice.
So, let’s recap: your tax dollars go to fake crisis pregnancy centers that deceive women with unscrupulous options on managing their pregnancy. You okay with that?
Claire Gawinowicz
Oreland