While Texas CPCs get more money, welfare programs they refer to are cut

As The American Independent has reported, Texas’ six-year-old Alternatives to Abortion program has consistently received increases in state funding, while organizations that provide reproductive-health and family-planning services for the uninsured has steadily decreased. This year, the state Legislature did more than cut family-planning funding, however. It also cut More…

As Texas cuts family-planning funding, more goes to crisis-pregnancy services

With presidential hopeful Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s blessing, as of this month, Texas women’s health clinics and hospitals that provide medical and reproductive health services to low-income, uninsured women across the state have collectively lost approximately $74 million in state funding. Meanwhile, a state network of crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)

Alternatives to Abortion subcontractor records show history of violations

Over the past five years, evaluators have found violations at state-funded subcontractors for Texas’ Alternatives to Abortion Services Program, which reimburses nonprofits — typically faith-based groups — to provide mentoring, counseling and material assistance to pregnant women.

But while those site visits were conducted by a contractor for the state, More…

Alternatives to Abortion insulated from state cuts to mental health, Medicaid

Whether the final state budget looks more like the Spartan version passed by the state House or the less-austere bill struggling in the Senate, Texas mental health care providers are bracing for significant cuts. Family planning dollars are also uncertain, with the Senate looking to spare what the House has More…

Texas’ reimbursement rate for abortion alternatives mentors/counselors greater than for master’s-level professionals

Texas’ Alternatives to Abortion Services Program reimburses nonprofit subcontractors $63 per hour for mentoring/counseling performed by unlicensed volunteers to pregnant women. That’s more than the state, under Medicaid, pays master’s-level professionals to provide counseling or social work in crisis situations, but less than it pays doctorate-holding psychologists to perform More…

Texas pays higher rate for abortion alternatives counselors/mentors than for family planning nurses

When Texas representatives voted to move $7.3 million into the state’s Alternatives to Abortion Services Program from family planning services, they shifted funds to an initiative that pays $63 an hour for unlicensed volunteers to counsel/mentor pregnant women and refer them to other social services — a higher rate, oftentimes, More…

Texas House votes to restore state funding for anti-abortion, faith-based nonprofits

The Texas House approved Friday an amendment to state budget bill House Bill 1 that restores funding — albeit at a reduced level — for a program that pays faith-based nonprofits to counsel women with the intent to dissuade them from having an abortion.

Investigations by the More…

State-funded pregnancy center conflates religious, educational material

While faith-based “crisis pregnancy centers,” or CPCs, continue to receive state and federal taxpayer dollars through the state’s Alternatives to Abortion Services Program, a Texas Independent investigation of an Austin CPC supports critics’ assertions that the nonprofits routinely blur the line between counseling and religious proselytizing.

In three of five years, Texas anti-abortion program served fewer clients than targeted

[Editor's note: The original version of this story used incorrect data for the number of clients from fiscal year 2009. The story was updated April 1 at 3 p.m. Eastern time with the correct data.]

Since 2006, when the state started paying nonprofits to steer women toward childbirth rather than More…

Nearly all of Texas’ anti-abortion subcontractors are Christian groups

From 2006 to 2010, the state spent $11.7 million on its Texas Alternatives to Abortion Services Program, with nearly $7 million of that finding its way to 33 nonprofits (all but one with Christian affiliations) via the state’s primary contractor, the nonprofit Texas Pregnancy Care Network, according to public More…