The budget for the state of Michigan isn’t due until the end of September, but our Legislature is in the midst of the process for hammering out a budget proposal for 2022.
This year, prolife leadership is working on several prolife provisions in the budget, most of which involve increasing pregnancy help options available for women facing crisis pregnancies. The Michigan House just passed a resolution declaring May 13 Pregnancy Resource Center Awareness Day.
Elections have consequences, and electing prolife legislators means supporting the work of pregnancy help agencies, instead of attacking them and funding abortion instead.
Below is a list of some of the provisions being considered. Specifics may change on some of these items, but it’s encouraging to see prolife legislators make pregnancy help a real priority in this year’s budget proposal. We’ll keep you updated as the budget moves along through the Legislature, and eventually to Governor Whitmer
Promoting Adoption
A proposed budget provision would allocate $10 million to promote adoption as an alternative to abortion.
Redirecting Tax Dollars Away from Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood’s idea of family planning and maternal health is taking the lives of the family’s youngest members. A budget provision would replace federal Title X (family planning) and Title V (maternal and child health) money with state funding streams. These streams will specifically exempt abortion facilities from receiving the money.
Maternal Navigator Pilot Program
A budget provision would allocate $3 million to create a new maternal navigator program to help pregnant mothers find appropriate help resources and referrals.
Pregnancy Resource Center Grants
A budget provision would make $1.5 million available to pregnancy resource centers that promote childbirth and alternatives to abortion.
Funding Real Alternatives
Governor Gretchen Whitmer vetoed funding for the state’s Real Alternatives program, which directly benefits pregnancy help centers. A budget provision would refund the program with $700,000.
Preventing COVID Vaccine Coercion
Some prolife people have ethical objections to taking the COVID vaccines due to the involvement of fetal tissue taken from aborted babies in the research and development process. The budget would prohibit funding of mandatory vaccination programs or creation of “vaccine passports” that require individuals to have proof of vaccination to access services or enjoy basic human rights or participate in the economy.
Enforcing the Stem Cell Amendment
Much to our disappointment, Michigan voters narrowly approved an amendment to the Michigan Constitution in 2008 allowing human embryos to be killed for research in our state. Human embryonic stem cell research itself was never illegal in Michigan, but state law prevented killing unborn children for research purposes. Proponents promised cures to serious diseases and a biotech and economic revolution in our state from allowing more steps in the human embryonic stem cell research process to occur here.
Did any of those promises happen? Nope, not at all. Despite this, stem cell researchers are pushing to extend the limit on growing unborn children outside the womb from 14 days to perhaps 28 days or indefinitely. However, the Michigan stem cell amendment specifically limits the research to 14 days. Researchers will be tempted to violate our state’s Constitution, figuring they can continue promising miracle cures to justify it as a pro-abortion administration and judges look the other way.
A proposed budget provision would allocate money to make sure that the Michigan Constitution is being enforced and the practice of fetal farming—growing children outside the womb for lethal science experiments—doesn’t come to Michigan.