"Pregnancy Resource Centers" have been receiving millions in federal funds that are mis-allocated and used to spread inaccurate and misleading health information to women.

In August of 2006, after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and lawsuit, CREW received documents from the Department of Health and Human Services. We've posted all the documents on the new collaborative research site, governmentdocs.org.

Today, Huffington Post ran an article that shines a spotlight on a gross abuse of federal spending exposed by CREW.

The Northern Hill Pregnancy Care Center in Spearfish, South Dakota, for example, has been granted more than $630,000 over three years despite seeing only 110 to 150 new clients per year. The Door of Hope Pregnancy Care Center in Madisonville, Kentucky, was given more than $300,000 in federal grants over the last two years, even though the entire female population of the town (all ages) is less than 11,000. First Choice Pregnancy Center in Texarkana, Texas, meanwhile, sees between 800 and 1,000 patients annually. For that, the center has been granted more than $1.3 million over three years - an average of approximately $500 per person per year.

Executives with these centers say they are providing an invaluable medical service and support to their patients. "Our main role is to be a place of refuge for women, teens and families in a crisis pregnancy situation," Kim Banks, executive director of the Texarkana facility, told The Huffington Post.

But watchdog groups say otherwise.

"It is ridiculous that there is a ton of money going to these tiny towns," Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of CREW told The Huffington Post. "You have to wonder what that money is being spent on. It can't possibly have all been spent educating women and teens about anything related to pregnancy."

But for Sloan and others it is not just an issue of mis-allocating federal funds. Many of these centers are often criticized for using the money they are granted to provide women with false impressions about abortion, abstinence, and pregnancy.

Here's CREW's release after we received all the documents:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has provided documents in answer to a lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW sued HHS over its failure to provide documents related to the details of its policy of using federal funds to support pregnancy resource centers, some of which have been found to provide false and misleading information to pregnant teenagers seeking their services. CREW originally filed a FOIA request for those documents on August 4, 2006; that request can be viewed below.

On October 27, 2006, CREW sued HHS for failing to fulfill its request. On February 5, 2007, in response to CREW's lawsuit and underlying FOIA, CREW received approximately 3343 pages of documents from two components of HHS – the Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). These documents represent briefing documents, grant applications and related documents pertaining to pregnancy resource centers.

Earlier this month, CREW received 3343 pages of documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request relating to federally funding Pregnancy Resource Centers. 

CREW had to file a sue HHS in October of 2006 to fulfill this request.

The documents can be viewed here.  We'll be poring over them -- if you have some time, take a look.

The history of this FOIA request is important. We sued HHS over its failure to provide documents related to the details of its policy of using federal funds to support pregnancy resource centers, some of which have been found to provide false and misleading information to pregnant teenagers seeking their services.

In July 2006, Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) released a report based on his request that the U.S. House of Representatives’ Special Investigations Division conduct an investigation into whether the information provided to pregnant women and teens by federally funded pregnancy resource centers is scientifically accurate. According to the report, pregnancy resource centers were created in 2002, and are a component of the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiative program. For the purposes of this report, female investigators focused on the 25 pregnancy resource centers that have received grants from the Compassion Capital Fund. Posing as pregnant 17-year-olds trying to have an abortion, the investigators successfully telephoned 23 of the 25 centers and requested information and advice regarding unintended pregnancy. Out of the 23 pregnancy resource centers that were successfully contacted, 20 provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion. Some of them also misrepresented the medical risks of abortion by informing callers that abortion could increase the risks of breast cancer, sterility and suicide.