Michigan Governor Whitmer Vetoes Funding for ‘Fake’ Crisis-Pregnancy Centers, Adoption Program

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer vetoed millions of dollars in funding for crisis-pregnancy centers on Wednesday.

The $20 million she scrapped using her line-item veto were part of a $76 billion budget for the fiscal year 2023, which was supposed to include $3 million for pregnancy-resource centers and $10 million for an advertising program that praised adoption over abortion.

Whitmer “cannot support aspects of a bill that sends millions in taxpayer dollars to fake health centers that intentionally withhold information from women about their health, bodies, and full reproductive freedom,” Whitmer’s spokesman Bobby Leddy said in a statement to Michigan Advance.

These types of clinics, Leddy said, “often use deceptive advertising that target young women and women with low incomes who are seeking abortion care, painting themselves as comprehensive, licensed health care clinics that provide all options, and then lie to women about medical facts.”

Whitmer’s attacks on crisis-pregnancy centers are not unlike those of Democrats on a national level. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii) are co-sponsors of a recent bill to crack down on “disinformation” from the clinics.

When asked what would count as prohibited disinformation under the bill, Warren described how these centers supposedly mimic Planned Parenthood’s logo and colors to “to imply to the public that if you come here, you could get abortion services.” When Mazie Hirono was asked the same question, she could not articulate a concrete example of what the bill would prohibit.

This is Whitmer’s problem as well. Leddy does not mention how crisis-pregnancy centers apparently lie to pregnant women, nor has Whitmer articulated that there is a vast epidemic of crisis-pregnancy centers impersonating medical clinics. The top pregnancy-resource center in Ann Arbor, where Whitmer’s daughters attend the University of Michigan, conducts its business entirely in a medical setting with medical professionals.

Even if we were to accept Whitmer’s case for withholding funding from the centers, that would account for only 15 percent of the $20 million she vetoed. Half of it would have gone to the adoption-over-abortion campaign that Republicans proposed.

We often hear from abortion proponents that abortion is an unfortunate but necessary procedure for those who undergo it. Regardless of our own personal beliefs about its morality, they argue, we have no right to impress those views on other people through the government.

This argument is flawed, of course, as the state has every right to stop someone from murdering another human being. Even if we were to accept that argument, however, would it preclude the state from trying to influence the actions of a pregnant woman in any way? Can the state do nothing to reduce the number of abortions through consensual, noncompulsive means such as advertising adoption resources?

Whitmer’s actions are but another indicator of her radical agenda on abortion. Her attitude on the issue goes back to when she was running for governor, when she posted a picture of herself wearing a pink hat emblazoned with the text, “Planned Parenthood Makes America Great.”

As governor, she has asked the state’s supreme court to find a nonexistent right to abortion in Michigan’s constitution, which was ratified in 1963, when the state enforced a law from 1931 that banned the procedure.

Whitmer’s nonsensical attacks on any reproductive service that does not put abortion on a pedestal are yet another reason why Michiganders must defeat the Reproductive Freedom for All ballot referendum, the language of which could be used to justify abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

Approving it would allow the governor to institute a radical regime of abortion that will neuter pro-life efforts to stop the murder of children.