At least 10 US states have siphoned millions of dollars from federal block grants, meant to provide aid to their neediest families, to pay for the operations of ideological anti-abortion clinics.
These overwhelmingly Republican-led states used money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Tanf), better known as welfare or direct cash aid, to fund the activities of anti-abortion clinics associated with the evangelical right. The clinics work to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.
In all cases, the states used these funds even as Covid-19 caused the worst economic upheaval in nearly a century, left one in four families without enough to eat, and resulted in mass layoffs that had a disproportionate effect on low-income and racial minority Americans.
Full article at The Guardian
The program gained traction after it was pioneered in 2001 by the former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who also helped craft the 1990s welfare reforms that made such state spending possible. That year, Pennsylvania became the first state to divert Tanf funds to anti-abortion clinics, and sent $1m to its Alternatives to Abortion program.