Times are tough all over, but there’s one budget item that, if the Senate has its way, seems not only safe but likely to get a funding boost. In the Senate’s draft budget, the infamous Alternatives to Abortion program would get another hefty bump in funding over the next biennium. The program, started in 2005 as a budget rider offered by Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, is meant to “encourage” women to carry their pregnancies to term. This is not accomplished via prenatal care, family planning services, or any kind of medical treatment at all, but rather by funding so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” – groups, generally religious in outlook, who provide “counseling” for pregnant women and link them to other government-funded programs, such as food stamps.
In 2009, state lawmakers increased the program’s budget from the initial $5 million biennial allocation in 2005 to $8 million – a 60% increase. And now the Senate’s draft budget includes another increase, up to $8.3 million for the next two years. What exactly the program, or its administrator, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network, has done to earn this amid such overwhelming budget strife is completely unclear. And while a lot of working folks didn’t see much of a raise (if any) last year, Vincent Friedewald, TPCN’s executive director, got a nice $3,200 boost, bringing his salary up to $107,300 for this fiscal year.
Whether this proposed funding increase will get any traction remains to be seen. The project doesn’t fare nearly so well in the House’s proposed budget, where it would be cut altogether, its funding zeroed out.
This article appears in January 28 • 2011.