Minnesota House Republicans, led by Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar (R-Hermantown), are pushing a bill that would funnel money away from reproductive health providers like Planned Parenthood and into so-called “crisis pregnancy centers.”
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC), which tend to be operated by anti-abortion organizations, are notorious for pressuring women to avoid abortions in favor of adoption, and they often falsely prevent themselves as unbiased medical providers. Indeed, according to the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics, “CPCs engage in counseling that is misleading or false. Despite claims to the contrary, these centers do not meet the standard of patient-centered, quality medical care.”
And unlike Planned Parenthood, CPCs do not provide other key reproductive health services like STD tests or basic birth control options like condoms.
The centers are so deceptive that in 2022, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison issued a consumer alert that “warns Minnesotans seeking reproductive health services about the limited services and potentially deceptive nature of certain claims made by some so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers.’”
Despite such circumstances, House File 25 proposes transferring some $8 million in grants dedicated to groups like Planned Parenthood to CPCs over the next two years. Zeleznikar’s bill comes after the GOP and Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party came to a power-sharing agreement earlier this month after weeks of Democratic boycott.
The bill is a part of a larger battle over reproductive health that is brewing under the second Trump term: Today, new Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he would be launching a probe into the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers mifepristone to be a viable and secure medication.
“President Trump has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone. He has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it,” Kennedy said. “Whatever he does [take a position], I will implement those policies.”