These centers, aimed at convincing “abortion-minded” women to continue their pregnancies, purchase videos from the “Earn While You Learn” program with federal funds intended to address maternal health and infant mortality.
This is not your typical parenting video.
A glowing, pink fetus hurtles through a tunnel of purple and blue dots, as dubstep pulses in the background. White font spells out the title: “Bonding With Your Unborn Baby.”
A young woman appears against a backdrop of stars. She offers to take us on a journey, to reveal how “even before birth, we are uniquely connected to our tiny, unborn babies.”
“She’s not just a mass of tissues growing into what will eventually become a baby, she IS a baby,” the narrator says. “And as she’s knit so intricately together, so is her personhood.”
Then the video’s agenda comes into even sharper focus.
“Around 18 weeks, your baby begins producing the same hormones found in adults, including cortisol, which is released when she feels pain or stress,” the narrator says.
That’s long before a fetus can actually feel pain.
This video is part of a curriculum designed for fake clinics, or crisis pregnancy centers, whose primary purpose is to convince “abortion-minded” clients to carry their pregnancies to term. In North Carolina, a Rewire.News investigation found, these centers purchase videos like it with federal funds intended to address maternal health and infant mortality. In exchange for watching them and completing worksheets, women earn points they can redeem for necessities like diapers and car seats.
The program, called “Earn While You Learn,” is used by as many as 2,000 centers nationwide, its founder, Dinah Monahan, told Rewire.News. In an introductory video on the program’s website, Monahan says her model is aimed at combating the “entitlement mentality”—while helping anti-choice centers expand their ministry and create openings to “share Christ.”
For the past several years, the North Carolina state legislature has directed a portion of its federal Maternal and Child Health block grant to the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship (CPCF), an umbrella group of anti-choice centers; that allotment is $400,000 annually for the current fiscal year and next.
Records show anti-choice centers subcontracted by CPCF have, since at least the 2015 budget year, used a portion of these funds to buy Earn While You Learn (EWYL) materials and incentives for those who complete them, with plans to buy more next year. The documents also reveal that centers, with approval from state regulators, purchased religious materials with federal funds, including DVDs intended to help men “discover authentic manhood as modeled by Jesus Christ.”
Read the full story at Rewire News
