Mississippi's anti-abortion pregnancy centers won. Now they're preparing for more babies

This story is a collaboration between USA TODAY and The Tennessean as part of the documentary video series “States of America.” The full episode of “States of America” exploring Mississippi’s maternal health care crisis premieres at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern on June 23 on USA TODAY Network’s streaming channel available on Samsung TV Plus (Channel 1023), Roku, Plex and many more. You can also catch our full series on YouTube. 

For decades, anti-abortion pregnancy resource or crisis centers focused on convincing people not to end their pregnancies. Last June, the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. All Southern states have since restricted abortion. The anti-abortion movement won.

Now what?

Crisis pregnancy centers and other anti-abortion advocates aren't resting on their laurels.

“We can’t just celebrate this as a victory,” said Greenville, Mississippi, pastor Matt Alexander. “To me, being pro-life is not just anti-abortion. Being pro-life is that you respect the value of life from the womb to the tomb.”

With abortion access in the South tighter than a girdle, some Mississippi pregnancy crisis centers are expanding their services. In a state with terrible maternal and infant mortality rates, they felt a responsibility to support those babies they wanted in the world.

Bait-and-switch operations

Traditionally, these centers offered free pregnancy tests, an ultrasound to confirm viability, information about abortion and adoption, baby supplies such as diapers and maternity clothes, and help connecting with social services.

They have come in for a lot of criticism.

Researchers and abortion advocates charge that they are deceptive, offering a bait-and-switch: They target low-income women who want an abortion and then waste their time, proselytize, deceive and tell them that if they have the (medically very safe) procedure, they risk serious medical harm, depression and damnation.

“Every interaction a prospective client has with a CPC is carefully designed to give the impression that the CPC is a health-care clinic that provides comprehensive, medically accurate counseling about all reproductive health-care options,” NARAL Pro-Choice America wrote in a 2015 report.

Since they aren’t medical centers, crisis pregnancy centers aren’t subject to the same regulations. Reveal investigations found a Florida group where a staffer gave dangerously inaccurate information with no repercussions and a Kentucky organization that didn’t properly sterilize ultrasound vaginal probes.

We interviewed 10 people who run pregnancy resource centers or similar Christian resource centers in Mississippi. A dozen additional centers declined an interview or did not respond to requests.

The people we spoke to pushed back, vigorously, against the characterization of their centers as bait-and-switch operations. They said they made it obvious they were anti-abortion Christians who did not offer medical care.

“I’m not deceptive. That’s why I’m talking to you,” said Dana Copeland, director of Sav-A-Life of Monroe County.

'If she had only had prenatal care'

Copeland is the Johnny Appleseed of prenatal vitamins. She passes them out wherever she goes. At the county jail. At the center she’s run for 25 years, where counseling pregnant women is just one part of the program.

The week after a tornado ripped up central Mississippi, Sav-A-Life gave out free meals, hot coffee, diapers, hygiene kits and, of course, prenatal vitamins.

Copeland’s passion for prenatal care started in high school. Her friend Rhonda hid her pregnancy from her parents, out of fear — until they heard her fall to the bathroom floor. She was having a seizure. Rhonda had eclampsia, dangerously high blood pressure during pregnancy. She and her preterm baby both died.

“That weighed heavy on me,” Copeland said. “When I went to nursing school, I understood exactly what happened. If she had only had prenatal care, she would probably be alive, and her baby, too.”

Not enough has changed. In one quarter of Mississippi births in 2021, the mother didn’t get prenatal care in the first trimester, the March of Dimes reported. That’s not acceptable, Copeland said.

Sav-A-Life’s services have expanded to meet community needs. The center offers domestic violence education and court-ordered parenting classes so children don’t go into foster care. There's a room for people to shower and get clean clothes if they are homeless.

Staff go from the county jail – they give pregnancy tests to women locked up – to the public schools, where they teach sex education. It’s an abstinence curriculum covering healthy dating, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and preventing teen pregnancy. They don’t talk about contraception, but that’s at the district’s request, Copeland said. At the center, she talks about it a lot.

Copeland is especially concerned about addiction.

“We are pro-life, but how can you wave that banner and not do something to stop the birth of babies addicted to drugs?” she asked. When she finds pregnant women with addiction, she tries to connect them with rehab. The center offers recovery meetings as well.

As for religion, “Do we share our faith? I share my faith when I go to Walmart,” she said. But “I don’t have to preach to everybody for them to know that I’m a believer. I am called to love and uplift others whether we share the same belief or not.”

Filling a gap?

Researcher Alice Cartwright co-authored a 2021 study that found crisis pregnancy centers did not offer complete, unbiased and accurate information.

However, “people are seeking care or support from those places that they are not getting anywhere else,” she said. “Those organizations are kind of filling a gap, maybe, for some of those people.”

For instance, several doulas and midwives told the USA TODAY Network they sent clients to pregnancy resource centers for proof of pregnancy so they could enroll in prenatal Medicaid.

Birth and death: Meet the Mississippi moms who fear for their lives a year after Roe fell

Maybe there are two groups of pregnancy resource center clients, Cartwright suggested: Those who find the services helpful and those who still want an abortion.

Several center staff members we interviewed said most women who had abortions did so because they couldn’t afford to care for the child. If that’s the case, they said, what’s wrong with offering resources to help them afford it?

Cartwright thought they had a point.

“We know that so many people who are seeking abortion are doing so for economic reasons,” she said. “There are a lot of material things that if people had access to them, they might make a different decision about their pregnancy.”

At the same time, poverty and the lack of support for families are “a larger societal, structural problem,” she said. Low-wage jobs, low educational attainment, the cost of child care – none is easy to solve. “It’s not just a matter of ‘I don’t have money for diapers,’” she said.

‘Whatever support they need, however long they need it’

There is no pregnancy resource center in Greenville, Mississippi, the Delta’s largest city. Instead, there is the Hope Center at First Baptist – down the hall and up the stairs from the church’s soaring stone vault, six fluorescent-lit classrooms of free clothing, furniture, toys and toiletries.

Pastor Matt Alexander is as anti-abortion as they come. A father of four including newborn twins, he believes God has a plan for every life, even those conceived accidentally. Even if a doctor says the baby won’t live, or the mother will die, Alexander doesn’t believe abortion is morally OK.

“God does miracles every day,” he said. “I think we have to leave those things in God's hands.”

He believes that to be truly “pro-life,” you don’t hold up signs outside an abortion clinic – even if Mississippi still had one. It’s “walking with that child and with that mother through whatever support they need, however long they need it,” he said.

Dobbs “changes the way that we do ministry, but at the same time we should have been doing this type of ministry even before the Dobbs decision,” he said.

First Baptist is stepping up support. The church is co-sponsoring a new mobile pregnancy resource center – a van that comes from Tupelo, three hours away, and offers initial screening with a nurse. Along with offering clothing, the Hope Center connects people to job training or free medical care, the latter often with members of the congregation.

Of course, First Baptist is a church. A Hope Center visit starts with a brief counseling period with volunteers or staff members. They ask clients if they want to be prayed for or to pray together. Most welcome it, Alexander said. "We want to make sure that we offer every individual the same level of dignity and spiritual support because all are loved by God."

First Baptist also offers Embrace Grace. It’s a nationwide, 12-week Bible study for pregnant women that pairs them with a mentor and throws them a baby shower. The Scripture focuses on helping participants understand "their self-worth in God’s eyes,” Alexander said.

Mississippi midwives' superpower: Listening when doctors do not

Embrace Grace has not taken off. In close to two years, three women have chosen to participate. One barrier, he acknowledged, could be that the church mentors tend to be white and middle-class, and the pregnant women they hope to reach tend to be Black and poor.

First Baptist isn’t alone: Would-be Embrace Grace coordinators at churches in Amory and Indianola said they had found no takers so far.

The Hope Center, however, is doing much better. It serves maybe 30 to 50 people per year, of whom perhaps a dozen are pregnant, he said.

Alexander certainly wants pregnant women to join a church – First Baptist or another. “We feel that that spiritual support goes a long way in the emotional and physical need that they're experiencing,” he said.

But he's OK if they just come and take diapers and clothes.

“We can't tell them God loves you and has a plan for you if we're not willing to help you meet your needs,” he said.

Danielle Dreilinger is an American South storytelling reporter and the author of the book “The Secret History of Home Economics.” You can reach her at ddreilinger@gannett.com or 919/236-3141. Andrea Kramar is a senior video producer at USA TODAY, currently focusing on the "States of America" series. Mona Iskander is a "States of America" freelance senior producer based in New York.

This article originally appeared on The American South: Mississippi's anti-abortion pregnancy centers adapt after fall of Roe