Pregnancy resource centers spent more than $452 million last year providing medical care, parenting education, and material goods to struggling families as an alternative to abortion.
A new report from the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute, published Monday, showed that pregnancy resource centers, also known as crisis pregnancy centers, have played an increased role in women’s healthcare since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision gave states the ability to curtail or ban abortion.
The nearly 2,800 pregnancy resource centers have provided hundreds of millions of dollars in resources to women, their partners, and their children. PRCs nationwide saw more than 1 million new clients in 2024, up from nearly 884,000 in 2017.
CLI Executive Director Karen Czarnecki told reporters ahead of publishing the report that PRCs have become an even more important part of the so-called “pro-life safety net” since the Dobbs decision.
“Since Dobbs, I think we can say the centers have not only been serving women, men and children, but they’ve really expanded their reach,” Czarnecki said. “Some of the key findings of this report, pregnancy center saw over 1 million new clients, which is the equivalent of each center serving a new client every day in 2024.”
PRCs in 2024 provided more than $116 million in material support for parents, including more than $71 million for diapers, nearly $5 million for wipes, and $25 million for baby clothes.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists warns that PRCs falsely represent themselves and their staff as medical professionals and do not provide evidence-based medicine, but most of the nearly $500 million spent in 2024 by PRCs went toward free or low-cost medical services, provided by the roughly 10,000 paid or volunteer medical staff members who work with PRCs nationwide.
PRCs spent more than $159 million on providing ultrasounds and $6.3 million on pregnancy tests in 2024. The CLI estimates that the wage costs for nursing services provided by medical professionals at PRCs equate to $34 million.
The number of ultrasounds provided by PRCs has also steadily increased, according to the CLI report, from roughly 400,000 annually in 2017 to more than 636,000 in 2024.
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Marjorie Dannefelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, which is the parent organization of the CLI, told reporters ahead of the publication of the report that the work provided by PRCs is particularly important considering that abortion rates have increased since the Dobbs decision and the widespread availability of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol.
“It is important in this moment to put into context the incredible work that pro-life centers do, and the increasing demand and how they have stepped up to do that work, even in the past, just in the past year,” Dannefelser said.
