Gov. Kim Reynolds holds a baby in a photo shared to her official Twitter, June 8, 2023.

Starting in 2022, the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) began looking for a qualified independent third-party to administer a program that will use millions in tax dollars to fund privately run anti-abortion centers — which call themselves “pregnancy resource centers” — in the state. The More Options for Maternal Support (MOMS) program was created by a bill pushed through the legislature with only Republican support. The bill allocated $2 million in initial funding for the program. Gov. Kim Reynolds has described MOMS as an important part of her anti-abortion agenda.

The MOMS program was supposed to begin distributing funds to the anti-abortion centers it selected on July 1, 2022, but that didn’t happen because DHHS could not find a qualified third party to administer the program. It still hasn’t.

“I see the failure to find a suitable administrator as a time when we should reflect on the viability of the program that will send taxpayer dollars to pregnancy resource centers,” Rep. Heather Matson, a Democrat from Ankeny, said on Thursday.

That didn’t happen. Instead, the House gave final approval to a bill to eliminate the requirement for an independent third party to administer the MOMS program and allow DHHS to directly administer it. DHHS will have the option of hiring a third party to administer the program, but the same bill, SF 2552, eliminates the qualifications for an administrator mandated in the original 2022 bill, leaving the matter to DHHS’s discretion entirely.

Despite objections from Matson and other Democrats, the Republican majority in the House passed SF 2552 on a vote of 61-34.

During the floor debate, Matson and fellow Democrat Rep. Austin Baeth of Des Moines brought up incidents where pregnancy resource centers in Iowa had provided deceptive and substandard care. Baeth said he had phoned one center that does ultrasound scans of pregnant patients to inquire about the certification staff members who perform ultrasounds have.

“[D]o you guys have certification? Are you registered diagnostic ultrasonographers?” Baeth said he asked the staff member who answered his call.

“She said, ‘No, we’re nurses, but we have some training. They’ve showed us how to do it’.”

Rep. Michael Bergan, a Republican from Dorchester, dismissed the idea that a lack of certification should be a concern.

“They operate under the Board of Nursing and their own protocols as trained medical professionals and I’m personally confident that, you know, this standard of care that’s put out will be incorporated in any contract for any services and will be monitored,” Bergan said.

An April 20, 2023 tweet from Twitter user @Ollie_XVX, documenting the vandalism of Informed Choices’ Iowa City location.

SF 2252 defines the centers eligible for tax dollars through the MOMS as providers of “those nonmedical services that promote child birth by providing information, counseling, and support services that assist pregnant women or women who believe they may be pregnant to choose child birth and to make informed decisions regarding the choice of adoption or parenting with respect to their children.”

Pregnancy resource centers are more commonly known as “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs. The American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists describes the centers as “facilities that represent themselves as legitimate reproductive health care clinics providing care for pregnant people but actually aim to dissuade people from accessing certain types of reproductive health care, including abortion care and even contraceptive options.”

“Staff members at these unregulated and often nonmedical facilities have no legal obligation to provide pregnant people with accurate information and are not subject to HIPAA or required by law to maintain client confidentiality. Many CPCs are affiliated with national organizations that provide funding, support, and training to advance a broadscale antiabortion agenda.”

The academy notes that centers often employ tactics to “intentionally create delays that can leave people unable to access abortion care in their communities, forcing them to continue their pregnancies. This is particularly pronounced in states with gestational age bans.”

Republican Rep. Brad Sherman of Williamsburg said he was certain the centers employ qualified people who provide proper care, based on his experience as a founder of Informed Choice of Iowa, which operates crisis pregnancy centers in Iowa City and Burlington.

“I’m proud of the work we did at Informed Choice (of Iowa), and it continues today, and I just feel like that needed to be correct,” Sherman said, pushing back against examples of substandard care and unprofessional behavior.

DHHS moving ahead with its own selection of MOMS funding recipients in apparent violation of the 2022 law creating the program will cease to pose any possible legal problem as soon as Gov. Reynolds signs the bill.

Sherman, who was first elected to the House in 2022, is a pastor by profession. In addition to his opposition to abortion, Sherman campaigned on his opposition to the separation of church and state and his support for Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

Informed Choice of Iowa is one of the centers that has already been selected for funding by DHHS. Even though state law still requires a third party administer MOMS, and will do so until the governor signs SF 2252, DHHS announced three months ago that it was moving forward with distributing the funding for the anti-abortion centers, and had selected Informed Choice and three other organizations as the first recipients.

The other anti-abortion centers selected to receive taxpayer funding are Alternative Pregnancy Center, which has locations in Cedar Falls and Waterloo, Lutheran Services of Iowa and Bethany Christian Services.

Lutheran Services of Iowa operates a crisis pregnancy center in Red Oak, and is part of a Luther Services network that has locations in Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Bethany Christian Services is a Michigan-based nonprofit that has centers in 27 states. In Iowa, it operates locations in Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Orange City and Pella.

DHHS moving ahead with its own selection of MOMS funding recipients in apparent violation of the 2022 law creating the program will cease to pose any possible legal problem as soon as Gov. Reynolds signs the bill. The final section of the bill states, “This Act applies retroactively to July 1, 2022.”

And unlike most bills, which don’t take effect until the beginning of the new fiscal year on July 1, a provision of SF 2252 makes it take effect immediately because “it is deemed of immediate importance.”