A week after Ohioans voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, members of the state legislature are considering a bill that would give tax credits for donations to anti-abortion facilities.
On Tuesday, the Ohio senate finance committee discussed a bill from the state senator Sandra O’Brien, a Republican, who proposed that individuals who give to “qualifying pregnancy resource centers” may be eligible for tax credits, at a cost of up to $10m to Ohio.
Anti-abortion counseling centers – which are also known as crisis pregnancy centers – offer free services to pregnant women, are frequently faith-based and aim to convince people to continue their pregnancies.
They have also been accused of attempting to mislead the people who walk through their doors. Because these centers are often located next to abortion clinics and have names like “Birth Choice” or “Woman’s Choice”, critics say they purposely lead people seeking abortions to enter them by accident and then give them inaccurate information about abortion.
A report for the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which supports abortion rights and analyzed 188 centers, found that more than 70% used some kind of misleading technique in their digital advertising. Almost 40% did not say on their homepage that they do not provide abortion, while 10% exaggerated the mental health risks of abortion and 7% exaggerated the possibility of complications in future pregnancies.
In the committee meeting, O’Brien said that there are more than 175 “pregnancy resource centers” in Ohio. (Her bill would specifically apply to donations to nonprofit centers.) More than 2,500 centers now dot the US; they outnumber abortion clinics three to one.
“Their work and care day in and day out shows their commitment to serving women and families around them, and serving the lives of the unborn,” O’Brien said. “A tax credit is the least we can do.”
Many states have long funded these centers. After the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, that funding increased in multiple states; Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, recently increased the two-year budget for a program that awards grant money to anti-abortion centers from $6m to $14m.
In the wake of the vote on abortion rights amendment in Ohio, some Republicans in the Ohio state legislature have said that they will introduce legislation to remove judges’ ability to interpret the new amendment. Instead, they aim to hand that power back to the state legislature – which is controlled by Republicans.
The state senator Jerry Cirino, a Republican, seemed to reference the vote during the Tuesday hearing.
“We need more of these centers because women are in crisis,” Cirino said. “In light of recent initiatives at the polls, I should say, I think we need to make sure that we are reaching out to women that are in these situations and figuring out how we can help them more.”
