Concern for women’s health and safety should never be worn as a facade. Yet that is precisely how Planned Parenthood has worn it for decades — until now.

At long last, taxpayers are no longer subsidizing that organization’s medical negligence and harm toward women. That is creating room for the kind of authentic care that expectant mothers deserve.

For the first time in history, Congress has defunded Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in this year’s federal budget. This landmark achievement is a new beginning and sets a crucial precedent to end forced taxpayer funding of the abortion industry.

The pro-life movement is meeting the moment to make sure that every woman contemplating abortion — whether out of perceived necessity or by choice — has access to the expansive safety net of pregnancy resource centers and maternity homes.

These resources deliver genuine care and compassionate services to mothers and their children before, during, and after birth. They protect the physical and mental health of women and the lives of their unborn sons and daughters. This network is what will help honor and protect life, empower women, and strengthen families, now and for years to come. 

Since Planned Parenthood announced its plan to build an abortion center in my Texas hometown 27 years ago, I have spoken out about how abortion needlessly wrecks the lives of the women who are told that it will solve their problems. The same people who tell them that lie also tend to discourage them from seeking help from sources better suited to give them peace of mind and body and real support and care.

Nearly 70 percent of women with histories of abortion describe their abortions as inconsistent with their own values. More than 60 percent of women who have had abortions say they didn’t want to have them but were pressured to abort by at least one person. 

For every time Planned Parenthood offers a woman a dangerous surgical procedure or tells her to consume a risky chemical abortion drug unaccompanied, a pregnancy resource center can offer her the opposite: practical resources, counseling, and reassurance to support her in a time of need. In fact, stories abound of women who find healing and comfort after walking through the doors of their local pregnancy help organization. 

One Nebraska mother overcame decades of drug addiction, prostitution and homelessness after discovering the Bethlehem House, her local maternity home. She had long given up hope of having a stable life when she found herself in jail with a cocaine addiction and pregnant with her third child. When her counselor connected her to the Bethlehem House, she felt “supported and believed in for the first time ever.”

She is now nearly 20 years sober, a homeowner and employed with two jobs — a truly happy outcome to a challenging journey.

A mom from Mississippi found a “non-judgmental environment” at her local pregnancy help center, the Center for Pregnancy Choices, where she was met with open arms after she became pregnant for the first time as a college senior. She feared that she would be unable to raise a child while pursuing her degree, but she was given extensive support — including “free counseling, prenatal vitamins, an ultrasound and whatever she needed to make the journey. It was sufficient to help her meet her academic goals “even with a child.” The center also gave her the support she needed when she became pregnant a second time during graduate school.

Note that such resources would not have been available at many Planned Parenthood clinics. An analysis of the organization’s 2024 annual report found that  97 percent of clients seeking help with a pregnancy are sold abortions (402,000) “rather than given prenatal care, provided care for a miscarriage, or helped to make an adoption plan” (less than 13,000).

These women’s moving testimonies about their experiences with pregnancy centers are not uncommon. Across the country, a network of approximately 2,750 such centers and maternity homes have rescued women from living behind dumpsters and helped them flee abusive relationships and break crippling addictions. In 2022 alone, these pregnancy resource centers met with clients more than 16 million times and provided services to nearly 975,000 new clients.

When people learn about Planned Parenthood’s substandard care — as reported in a front-page exposé in the New York Times earlier this year — a majority support cutting the organization’s taxpayer funding. Indeed, 83 percent of Americans who learn about the superior care offered at pregnancy and maternity centers are enthusiastic to hear about the relief and resources available.

Polling shows that 70 percent of voters favor public funding for local pregnancy resource centers because of the groups’ willingness to offer women prenatal care, diapers, cribs and other essential supplies and services, instead of the abortions and life-altering gender transition hormones now offered at many abortion facilities.

It took 50 years of unity, perseverance, and grassroots mobilization to overturn Roe v. Wade. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s pro-life provisions are a testimony to the movement’s ongoing resolve to bring a culture of life back to America.

We will continue working diligently to ensure that mothers and children in need have a much better choice: the compassionate support they need to thrive from the very moment of conception until natural death.

David Bereit is executive director of the Life Leadership Conference. He previously founded and led the global 40 Days for Life movement.