A young woman holds a pregnancy test in her hands Credit: Adobe Stock

Florida lawmakers have, for the second year in a row, earmarked nearly $30 million in their proposed state budget for a network that doles out funds to facilities that aim to deter abortion.

These not-for profit “crisis pregnancy centers,” often run by Christian or other religious groups, operate with little to no federal or state oversight — as they are not technically medical facilities — and they sometimes don’t even have licensed medical staff on site, even when they advertise services like ultrasounds.

Although Florida Democratic lawmakers Carlos Guillermo Smith and Kelly Skidmore previously sought to strengthen regulation of crisis pregnancy centers in Florida that receive state funding, their proposed legislation died this spring after failing to move forward in the Republican-dominated Legislature.

According to a tracker from Expose Fake Clinics, Florida is currently home to more than 170 of these centers. They often pose as licensed abortion clinics (using terms like “choice” in their names) and use deceptive tactics to draw pregnant people in, such as offering free ultrasounds and strategically choosing locations near actual abortion providers to confuse people.

Roughly 80 of these anti-abortion centers — and the religious groups that run them — in Florida received state funding through the Florida Pregnancy Care Network in 2024, according to a recent tax filing. Florida is one of at least 14 states in the U.S. with such a program in place, all of which collectively funnel millions of dollars into the anti-abortion movement each year.

“For the second year in a row, Florida lawmakers directed nearly $30 million in taxpayer money to unregulated, anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers with zero oversight or accountability,” Orlando-area Sen. Smith told Orlando Weekly in a statement. “That makes the need to protect pregnant women from deceptive practices and misinformation happening at CPCs more urgent than ever, especially given the state’s near-total abortion ban.”

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As of last May, Florida law bans most abortion procedures after six weeks of pregnancy, offering limited exceptions for medical emergencies and for those who can produce documentation (e.g., police reports) to prove their pregnancy was the product of rape or incest.

Florida’s six-week ban, initially stalled by a court challenge, has affected not just those seeking abortion in Florida, but also pregnant people across the U.S. South, since all surrounding states have either similarly banned abortion after six weeks or have banned it entirely since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to abortion in 2022.

A recent report from the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive rights nonprofit, found that there were 11,200 fewer abortions provided in Florida in 2024 as compared to 2023. It was the largest decline seen anywhere across the country.

“At a moment when extremist lawmakers are systematically dismantling access to qualified reproductive and maternal health care, understanding the unregulated industry they increasingly promote as a model for health care is not just urgent — it is essential,” said Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch executive director Debra Rosen in a recent statement.

Florida’s controversial funding mechanism for anti-abortion centers, known as an “alternatives to abortion” program, dates back to the administration of former Gov. Jeb Bush. The explicit goal of the program was to “convince women with unwanted pregnancies not to have abortions,” according to reporting from the Lakeland Ledger at the time. Former Tampa Republican Jackie Toledo in 2018 sponsored legislation providing permanent state funding to private “pregnancy centers” through this program.

Under the law, pregnancy centers that receive state funds are required to be “non-coercive” in nature and ensure their materials do not include “religious content.” Enforcement of these requirements, however, is spotty. One taxpayer-funded facility in Fort Lauderdale, Mary’s Pregnancy Center, ended up shuttering in 2023, the Florida Trident reported, after finding itself in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service.

In addition to funding these facilities, Florida’s alternatives-to-abortion program is also responsible for the grisly billboards seen on state highways that claim to offer help to people who find themselves with an unwanted or unexpected pregnancy. Such billboards, typically promoting resource hotlines, generally direct callers to one of the state-funded anti-abortion centers for “help,” which could mean adoption resources, or a limited supply of free baby items like diapers.

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The fact is, Florida didn’t always give this program so much money. The very same law (SB 300) that Florida lawmakers approved in 2023 to ban most abortions after six weeks also gave this anti-abortion program a five-fold funding increase, from $5 million a year to $25 million annually. As Reveal News and the Miami Herald jointly reported shortly after, the state Department of Health quietly decided to up the Florida Pregnancy Care Network’s contract to $29 million later that year.

Florida lawmakers’ proposed budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year — to begin July 1 — totals $115 billion in total, and includes sizable giveaways to other conservative projects too, including $500,000 for a Christian group from Texas that uses sophisticated digital strategies, including search engine optimization, to intercept pregnant people who are searching for abortion care.

The final proposal, still awaiting approval from DeSantis, was agreed upon by both chambers of the Legislature after a nearly comical bout of GOP infighting, roughly six weeks after the state’s 2025 legislative session was initially scheduled to end. DeSantis recently said he plans to veto $500 million from the proposal, blaming House leadership for the delay in reaching a final agreement.

“The reality is the House leadership [dragged] this out for 45 days for really no reason at all,” DeSantis said, according to the USA Today Network. “The budget that was enacted is not any type of sea change. There were no major policy victories in it. It was something that could’ve been done 45 days ago.”

Suffice it to say, as someone who campaigned across the state against an unsuccessful effort last year to strengthen abortion rights in Florida through the ballot box, that $500 million is unlikely to cut into the Florida Pregnancy Care Network’s budget. That’s unless DeSantis is still bitter about the nonprofit opting not to use additional funds it received from his administration to run ads against Florida’s abortion rights initiative last fall.

As it is, abortion access under the new Trump administration is already facing the chopping block, as federal funding for Planned Parenthood faces an uncertain future amid cuts proposed in Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

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This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2025.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.