Mother Jones illustration; Sean Kong/Unsplash
For nine years, Karen Musick stood outside the Little Rock Family Planning Services clinic in Arkansas, protecting women arriving for their abortion appointments from anti-abortion protesters who regularly gathered there. After retiring from her job as a loan specialist with the Small Business Administration, Musick was filled with purpose as a clinic escort volunteer. “I remember thinking on a Saturday morning, while I’m being called the devil and a murderer and all these things,” she recalls, “that I’m doing exactly what God wants me to do.”
In 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned and the total abortion ban in Arkansas went into effect that summer, the Little Rock clinic shut down. But Musick had found another way to contribute to the pro-choice movement by co-founding the Arkansas Abortion Support Network, which helps pregnant women travel out of state for abortion care. The clinic’s owner allowed them to work from the building for free.
Before the Dobbs ruling, Musick says, “Everybody knew something was going to be happening, and we often would talk about, why can’t we run our own CPC?” She was referring to crisis pregnancy centers, efforts by those opposed to abortion to discourage women from obtaining the procedure. So, that’s what Musick and the Arkansas Abortion Support Network decided to do. From the space that once housed the Little Rock abortion clinic emerged the state’s only pro-choice pregnancy resource center: the YOU Center.
Pregnancy resource centers, also known as crisis pregnancy centers, have for years been at the forefront of the anti-abortion movement’s agenda to target women navigating unplanned pregnancies. In Arkansas alone, there are more than 50, including one located next door to the YOU Center. Doctors, lawmakers, and reproductive rights groups long have accused many centers of masquerading as abortion clinics to attract clients who may be considering the procedure only to try to dissuade them from going through with it, pushing women toward parenting or adoption. They typically offer free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and baby supplies, but don’t promote birth control or emergency contraceptives. The state of Arkansas funneled $2 million in taxpayer funds to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers this year.
The dismantling of Roe v. Wade has prompted conversations about what it means to be pro-choice, several sources in the reproductive rights movement told me. Forest Beeley, the program director for All-Options in Indiana, pondered this question even before the Dobbs ruling. “Pregnant people get to choose what happens to their body and what happens with their pregnancy, whether that happens to be abortion or their birth plan or adoption, surrogacy, how they deal with infertility,” Beeley says. “Since Roe fell, a lot of people are seeing how all of those aspects of pregnancy and birthing and parenthood are just so interconnected.”
“Since Roe fell, a lot of people are seeing how all of those aspects of pregnancy and birthing and parenthood are just so interconnected.”
The YOU Center has adopted the crisis pregnancy center model and created a space where pregnant people can explore a full range of their options: parenting, adoption, or abortion. Staff at the Center mail out emergency contraceptives and birth control to residents throughout the state. They keep a closet stocked with supplies like menstrual products, baby formula, and prenatal vitamins. The sonographer who worked at the Little Rock clinic for 20 years now offers free ultrasounds to date pregnancies. Musick and her four colleagues work a few times a week from the clinic’s old recovery room, where they recently installed cubicles. “We’re trying to make sure that people in our state know that we’re the ones who give people choice,” Musick says.
The concept of a pro-choice organization operating a pregnancy resource center is not new. All-Options, for instance, opened a center in 2015 after receiving an infusion of cash from a generous donor who wanted to see a pro-choice organization “counteract the harm that crisis pregnancy centers were doing in our communities,” Beeley says. “Everybody who are pregnant and parenting deserves unconditional support, not stigma in any capacity.” Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and funding fizzled out in recent years, forcing the center’s physical location to close this year. All-Options still runs the Hoosier Abortion Fund, a counseling hotline for those needing guidance related to pregnancy, parenting, adoption, or abortion, as well as another talkline that offers spiritual support for people weighing their options. Confident that this model can be replicated elsewhere, they also offer training and support to other groups interested in running their own centers, and that includes the Arkansas Abortion Support Network.
Molly Rampe Thomas, founder and CEO of JustChoice in Ohio, has continued to expand the services her organization offers to better support all aspects of a pregnant person’s experience. JustChoice began as an adoption agency in 2010 that offered parents information on parenting, abortion, and adoption. “We’ve always said, the only way you can create a safe and ethical adoption plan is if a pregnant person is offered all options available to them.”
After Roe fell, “I decided it was time to really dig back into that mission, which was to be a true counter to CPCs,” she says. The city of Columbus awarded her organization $500,000 to create more resources for parents, ultimately leading to the creation of JustChoice’s hosting program, where pregnant people and children facing housing insecurity can stay with families who open their doors to them, as well as a mutual aid fund for people in need of financial assistance.
In November 2023, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment to protect abortion in the state. Nonetheless, Republican lawmakers have continued to funnel millions of taxpayer dollars to crisis pregnancy centers, which now number more than 120. JustChoice was hearing stories about pregnant people whose only option for an early ultrasound was a crisis pregnancy center. “So we knew right away it was a need that needed to be met,” Rampe Thomas says.
This year, JustChoice partnered with a local clinic to provide free ultrasounds. They are performed by Dr. Catherine Romanos, a family medicine doctor and abortion care provider. “JustChoice opened my eyes to the fact of how siloed abortion is in the reproductive justice movement. The abortion space is about abortion,” Dr. Romanos says, adding that volunteering with JustChoice prompted her to think about other ways of helping pregnant women and parents. “I have to participate in helping people much earlier on.”
In Arkansas, Musick and the rest of the abortion support network plan to continue adding services for pregnant people in need, she says. They recently started a diaper bank and hosted a childbirth class offered by a local doula. In the unlikely event that abortion becomes legal in her state again, their building will be ready to reopen as a clinic. “All of us believe that common sense has to come back at some point,” she says. “We’d like to have this space when it does.”