It was a cold Thursday morning outside of an abortion clinic just twenty minutes from my house at Wheaton College. I didn’t have class, so I made the drive to sidewalk counsel with a friend of mine from 40 Days for Life. We knew that morning was a surgical day at the clinic just like every other Thursday—the abortionist was in, and the clinic escorts were particularly aggressive. We stood just short of the property line with resource packets in hand.
By the time I arrived, seven women had already arrived for their appointments—my friend was taking notes and praying for each woman. Around noon, with around ten women still inside undergoing abortions, the clinic escorts took off their rainbow vests, packed up, and left. Clinic escorts never help women after their abortions, only before.
After about twenty minutes, a car rolled into the driveway. A man got out and went into the clinic waiting room. Seconds later, he opened the door for his girlfriend—she was bent at the waist, limping, crying, and wincing in pain with every step until she climbed into the car. By some miracle, the man rolled down his window to speak to my friend and me on the way out of the parking lot. My friend handed the man a resource packet for post-abortion counseling and care options in the area—but as he drove away, he threw the pamphlet out the window. It fluttered away in the wind.
Did that woman have a “choice”? Did that woman receive “healthcare”? The clinic escorts did not even stay long enough to help her leave, and the clinic staff did not bother helping her out the door, or at bare minimum, offer her a wheelchair. Was what I witnessed “empowerment,” or was it at best trauma, at worst a botched abortion?
Subpar care is not atypical at abortion providers like the one I prayed at every week in college. Even the New York Times noticed: in a stunning expose entitled “Botched Care and Tired Staff: Planned Parenthood in Crisis,” the notoriously left-leaning outlet reported several counts of egregious medical malpractice, health code violations, botched abortions, severely outdated facilities, and a widely overworked and underpaid staff. NYT correctly concluded that Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) has been in a state of decline for decades.
Congress noticed Planned Parenthood’s decline, too. On July 4, President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) barred hard-earned American tax dollars from funding Big Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood via Medicaid reimbursements, booting PPFA’s failing enterprise off the government dole for at least a year. Post-BBB, Big Abortion providers are grasping to keep taxpayer funds flowing—they were armed and ready for the Big Beautiful Bill’s passage on Independence Day with messaging, political strategy, and lawyers in hand.
Amid heated post-BBB lawsuits between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and abortion giants like PPFA and Maine Family Planning, brick-and-mortar abortion clinics are closing one by one. PPFA’s decades-long financial decline is entirely to blame for this sudden swath of closures, with the threat of the Big Beautiful Bill’s Medicaid defund as an effectual nail in the coffin.
Long before the BBB, a mark of PPFA’s decline was a consistent annual swath of clinic closures. From January 2022 to May 2025, sixty-six Planned Parenthood locations closed in the United States. In July alone, PPFA closed 25 clinics across 10 states, including its Houston mega clinic, despite an ongoing legal battle that has delayed the implementation of the BBB’s Medicaid moratorium.
With the closure of dozens of Planned Parenthood clinics, Congress has an opportunity to build a country that truly cares for mothers and babies. Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) strongly supports Rep. Diana Harshbarger’s (R-Tennessee-1st) Pregnancy.Gov Act which, if passed, would establish an easy-to-use online database for women in need of local prenatal or postnatal services, counseling, adoption resources, nutrition coaching, abuse relief and recovery, addiction services, mental health services, and an array of life-affirming care.
Women like the one I saw on that cold Thursday morning would benefit from Pregnancy.Gov, too. The bill is designed to commission states to connect abortion survivors and their families with support services and connect grieving mothers with pregnancy loss counseling.
As abortion clinics board their doors, women need to know that holistic, life-affirming care and real choices are readily available. Pregnancy.Gov would make that knowledge possible. Nineteen thousand federally qualified health centers (FQHCs)—already funded by the government and available for Medicaid users—provide the general and sexual healthcare Big Abortion cannot. In addition, 2,700 Pregnancy Resource Centers operated by charitable people of faith offer free help and life-affirming care, too. Women do not need Planned Parenthood’s 500 (failing) abortion clinics. Pregnancy.Gov is a simple, cost-free step Congress can make to connect pregnant and parenting women to these critical healthcare providers in every zip code across the United States.
Big Abortion providers are squirming under pressure from the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill—but the reconciliation package’s Medicaid moratorium has yet to go into full effect. Please join CWALAC in prayer as we work to see every abortion clinic in our nation closed for good—that includes ending forced taxpayer funding of the abortion industry. Moms and babies deserve real, authentic healthcare, choices, and support—Big Abortion provides none of the above, but life-affirming Federally Qualified Health Centers and Pregnancy Resource Centers do.
