June 26, 2024, 6:59 p.m.
As Republicans are inundated with criticism over their stances on abortion and reproductive rights, Sen. Katie Britt is trying to send a message: “We are truly the party of life, the party of parents, the party of families.”
This was part of the Alabama Republican’s speech on the Senate floor last week, a message antiabortion advocates are trying to promote as conservatives face down a tough election in November, when reproductive rights are expected to play a major role.
Republicans continue to grapple with their abortion-related messaging, even two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
On the House side, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson has encouraged his candidates to talk about abortion more, not less, in an effort to avoid Democrats defining them on the issue. The Senate Republican campaign arm has released a series of memos outlining the party’s support for items such as in-vitro fertilization and contraception.
Britt took to the floor to try to pass her bill, the MOMS Act, via unanimous consent last week. The measure calls for the establishment of pregnancy.gov, a clearinghouse of resources for pregnant and postpartum women that would provide recommendations based on a user’s ZIP code. Resources that provide abortions or counsel on abortions are prohibited.
The bill would also dole out grants to nonprofit organizations to help directly provide or connect pregnant women with different services, including nutrition, housing, and childcare assistance. The purpose is to help women carry their pregnancies to term.
Republican campaign operatives told National Journal that this bill—along with other similar bills—is a net positive for the party, allowing candidates to talk about ways Republicans support mothers and families.
A large part of Republican abortion strategy this cycle has been empathy, something Hudson has stressed for his candidates when talking about the issue. The Britt bill, one House Republican strategist said, would help voters understand Republicans' pro-family message and contrast it with Democrats' stance on the issue, which they're trying to portray as extreme.
In the Senate last week, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota objected to its passage, which meant it could not pass through unanimous consent. “This bill is another attempt to shift the narrative for Republicans away from the fact that they have blocked every attempt to pass bills that would actually protect women’s reproductive health and freedom. … Republicans know that they are out of step with the American people,” Smith said.
Alabama’s maternal-health toll
Britt has a lot to be worried about regarding the health of mothers in her home state.
Between 2018 and 2022, Alabama had one of the highest maternal-mortality rates, with 38.6 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only Tennessee and Mississippi had higher rates.
“We have more women who pass away during pregnancy than any other state in the nation,” Britt told National Journal in May. “And I believe we need to be doing everything in our power to put an end to that.”
Britt pointed to the bipartisan Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act, a bill designed to increase access to care in “maternal health care deserts,” which Britt said abound in Alabama. A little more than 34 percent of counties in the state are considered maternal-care deserts, according to an analysis from the March of Dimes.
Rep. Kat Cammack, a cochair of the Pro-Life Caucus, says part of the issue is workforce shortages. “I think that we need to start thinking about how we prioritize where we’re looking for workforce shortages and how we identify that,” Cammack said of maternal-care funding. “There’s a lot of opportunities out there, but it also starts with the recognition that there is a problem with the lack of care in rural America and in underserved communities.”
Alabama has extended Medicaid coverage to women 12 months postpartum, but it has not expanded Medicaid coverage up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level for adults.
Advocates in the state told National Journal that expanding Medicaid is crucial for maternal health. As of 2024, Alabama’s income limit for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid is 18 percent of the federal poverty level, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Childless adults don’t qualify.
Women have to “jump through hoops to try to get Medicaid,” said Victoria Enyinda Petty, maternal-health fellow at Alabama Arise. “If they’re trying to get Medicaid once they find out that they’re pregnant, sometimes it can take a long time until that coverage starts. They may be well into the first or even second trimester before they get coverage, so they’ve missed really important times to get prenatal care.”
Enyinda Petty said prenatal care is important to prevent health problems for the mother and the baby.
National Right to Life Committee President Carol Tobias suggested an expansion to Medicaid “so that the mother and the children are covered for a longer period of time, or that the coverage will start as soon as the woman knows she’s pregnant.”
Over the weekend, 15 national groups and advocates launched a Blueprint for Life that they described in a release as “a suite of policy priorities to defend life by providing for vulnerable children and their parents.”
The policies include support for an extension and expansion of the child tax credit, federal paid family leave, expanding Medicaid postpartum care, and streamlining adoption processes. Signers of the Blueprint include Americans United for Life, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
“Moving forward, we can no longer be the party of 'no,'” said Jesse Southerland, federal policy director at Americans United for Life. “Americans really want answers. How are pro-life Republicans and the pro-life movement going to address the root cause of abortion? How are we going to reduce abortion? How are we going to support families?”
The role of antiabortion pregnancy centers
The Blueprint also calls for more support for controversial antiabortion pregnancy centers, also known as pregnancy-resource centers or crisis pregnancy centers. Heartbeat International, which supports a network of 3,300 antiabortion pregnancy centers worldwide, has also signed onto the Blueprint.
Supporters of these facilities say they provide services to pregnant women and families, including material goods like pregnancy tests, diapers, and clothing. Critics argue that the centers use misleading tactics and spread misinformation about pregnancy and abortion.
There are 53 pregnancy-resource centers in Alabama, according to the University of Georgia’s Crisis Pregnancy Center Map.
“We do see very little maternal health care resources," said Lindsey Jayne Mullen, co-director for operations and development at the Alabama Cohosh Collaborative. "We also see that the organizations that are providing that care are crisis pregnancy centers, which means that they come with a conservative agenda and are known for distributing misinformation about abortion access and abortion availability in other states.”
The collaborative provides reproductive-care resources to new and expecting parents, including breast pumps, newborn supplies, and rides to doctors’ appointments.
Mullen says these centers should not be subsidized by tax dollars but should not necessarily be shut down, either. “If there are people who are comfortable with and want to receive support from an organization with a religious or political agenda, I think they should have access to that support,” she said.
GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland said women should have a place to go where they can feel supported if they choose to have a baby.
“That’s what pregnancy-resource centers are all about,” he said.
Harris and several of his Republican colleagues are concerned about a proposal from the Biden administration that they argue could block states from using Temporary Assistance for Needy Families dollars to support pregnancy-resource centers. A Congressional Research Service analysis said it’s not clear how many states use TANF funding for these facilities.
The Biden administration doesn’t “want to have these women have access to resources, obviously, and that’s why they’re cutting off the funding, the TANF funding, to pregnancy-resource centers,” Harris said. “Pregnancy-resource centers do far more than just help these women during their pregnancy. They also counsel them afterwards about not getting pregnant, if they think it’s the wrong time of their life, so they clearly would qualify under TANF.”
Harris joined his colleagues in passing a bill out of the House that would block the Biden administration from applying the proposal to pregnancy-resource centers.
Price tag
Republicans have also received criticism for their goal to slash government spending and how that impacts certain programs, as evidenced by last year’s proposed cuts to the Title X family-planning grants and changes to nutritional services.
Harris, who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee with oversight of the Agriculture Department, received pushback last year over his proposed funding levels for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Officials and advocates expressed concern that a funding shortfall in the program would lead to waiting lists.
Congress eventually provided the program a total of $7.03 billion for fiscal 2024. For 2025, the bill put forward by Republicans requests $7.2 billion, which Democrats complain is $462 million below what President Biden requested.
“There is no cutting of programs to pregnant women and children that is planned by the Republicans,” Harris said. “Again, this is a scare tactic that Democrats use, but the facts will speak for themselves.”
Southerland said he is starting to see “Republicans embrace the fact that every penny we spend to promote a culture of life is going to be worth it."
"They are actually having those tough conversations to say, ‘OK, how can we make this work?’” he said.
Britt’s bill also includes nutritional and health services that would be supported through the grants. She does not see the potential price tag as a barrier.
“Making sure that we support women in the prenatal, postpartum, and early-childhood-development age of their children I think is critically important,” Britt told National Journal before heading onto the Senate floor to try to pass her legislation.
She also said that funneling dollars into grants to address these services is better than using preexisting programs: “I think we’ve seen a number of issues with some of those programs that you’ve seen with regards to fraud, and being able to have very narrowly tailored opportunities for women who want to bring life into this world, who want to be mothers, I think is important.”
Ultimately, as Republicans grapple with abortion—both politically and on the Hill—they “need to do a much better job of getting our colleagues to understand what women’s health care actually is,” Cammack said. She said she envisions more federal money for “research, cures, and solutions.”
But, Cammack added, opening pocketbooks won't necessarily lead to better outcomes.
“We tend to throw money at a problem thinking that’s going to make it go away or fix it,” she said. “I hope by now everyone realizes you need to structurally reform things if you want things to be fixed.”
