How Coronavirus Relief Funds Are Being Weaponized Against Reproductive Health Care

When the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) passed in March to provide funding to keep small businesses afloat in the midst of COVID-19, between $4 million and $10 million were doled out to controversial faux-abortion clinics known as crisis pregnancy centers.

In a blatant attempt to dissuade women from having an abortion, crisis pregnancy centers masquerade as abortion clinics by locating themselves near actual clinics and replicating their names and logos to create confusion. Many of the staff at these centers are not medical professionals and attempt to scare women out of having an abortion by giving them false medical information like saying abortion makes women sterile. Though these centers are technically legal under the First Amendment, they are objectively unethical and dangerous for the women they claim to help. Allowing them to receive federal money is yet another example of the conservative crusade to deny women adequate health care.

Conservatives further weaponized coronavirus relief funds by trying to deny them to Planned Parenthood. When Republican senators discovered that Planned Parenthood affiliates received $80 million from the PPP, they called for an investigation and claimed Planned Parenthood did not meet the standards to qualify for funding. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley penned a letter to the Small Business Administration, in which he accused Planned Parenthood of committing fraud. “Planned Parenthood is not a small business. It is a multibillion-dollar company,” he wrote.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio demanded that the funds be returned and threatened legal action against Planned Parenthood and the Small Business Administration. He told Fox News, “If Planned Parenthood, the banks, or staff at the [Small Business Administration]

knowingly violated the law, all appropriate legal options should be pursued.”

These accusations are deeply misleading and reveal a total misunderstanding of how Planned Parenthood operates. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is too large to qualify for PPP funds and did not apply for any. All loans went to Planned Parenthood’s local affiliates, which are incorporated separately as 501(c)(3)s. These affiliates each have their own leadership, file their own tax documents, and many have fewer than 500 employees, which qualifies them to receive PPP loans.

Stephanie Fraim, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, told VICE, “It was crystal-clear that we met every single criteria that they had set out for applying to this loan.” She added that local Planned Parenthood affiliates need these funds to stay in business amid the coronavirus. “At the time that we were getting this loan, the economic uncertainty and our outlook was grim. All U.S. businesses and health care providers especially were facing — it was happening so rapidly, businesses were closing so rapidly. That moment was treacherous. And this loan came along at an important time,” she said.

If Republicans were actually concerned about maintaining a strict definition of small business in PPP funds, then where is the uproar over the money that business giants like the Los Angeles Lakers and Shake Shack received? Or advocacy for all the actual small businesses that the program left out?

Even the crisis pregnancy centers that received money from PPP were hardly mom and pop shops. Heartbeat International, which operates 2,700 crisis pregnancy centers worldwide, was given between $350,000 and $1 million to save 42 jobs. A clinic operated by the Obira Group was given up to $350,000 in funding even though the Group received a family planning grant of $5.1 million over three years from Title X, the very program President Trump forced Planned Parenthood to stop accepting funding from in 2019.

While so much has ground to a halt because of the pandemic, the weaponization of coronavirus relief funds shows that the conservative plan to hinder women’s health care is as strong as ever. From trying to shut down abortion clinics in the name of COVID safety to emboldening anti-choice protesters, this pandemic cannot be divorced from conversations around the attacks against reproductive rights. Though times of crisis offer many opportunities for distraction, we can’t afford to stop paying attention when it comes to protecting reproductive freedom.