Congress responds to the ideological war on pregnancy centers

(NRL News Today) The last administration left a stain on federal policy. For four long years, the Biden Administration treated pregnancy centers as a problem to solve instead of a gift to protect. That hostility still grips Washington Democrats and colors every debate over real help for women who choose to carry their children.

H. R. 6945, the “Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act,” walks straight into that fog and flips on the lights.

Ideology on stilts

The bill does something very simple and very explosive. It amends part A of title IV of the Social Security Act, the section that governs the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. It says, in plain English, that nothing in TANF can be twisted to block a state from using its grant to support pregnancy centers.

It spells out what a pregnancy center is – an organization that protects the life of both mother and unborn child. A place that offers relationship counseling, prenatal and pregnancy education, pregnancy testing, diapers, baby clothes, and other material support for mothers and fathers.

The Biden administration tried to rewrite TANF through regulation. It floated a rule that treated spending on pregnancy centers as suspect. It suggested that help for women who had already conceived did not really serve the “purposes” of TANF. That was not budget discipline. That was ideology on stilts. The message ran like this. If you guide a woman toward giving birth, you do not count. If you guide her toward abortion, you qualify as “health care.”

This fight started in the previous Congress with H. R. 6918. The House passed that bill. The Senate leadership quietly dug a legislative grave and dropped it in. The Biden White House even issued an official statement against it.

Imagine that. A presidential administration took time and energy to oppose a bill that protected poor women’s access to free ultrasounds and baby supplies. That opposition belongs in the record as a moral failure.

Unplanned Pregnancies, Fatherhood, & Strengthening Families | Roland Warren, CEO of CareNet

Now Congress has a second chance, and this time the bill comes back stronger.

Boxing in the bureaucrats

H.R. 6945 not only targets a bad regulation from a past administration. It repairs the actual statute. It writes protection for pregnancy centers into the law itself. That matters. Administrations change. Ideologues come and go. A clear statute boxes in the bureaucrats who think their job is to serve the abortion industry.

Representative Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota stepped forward to lead this fight. She introduced H. R. 6945 on January 6, 2026, with Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey and Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York beside her.

On January 14, the Ways and Means Committee advanced H. R. 6945. Every Republican on the committee voted to protect the right of states to support pregnancy centers with TANF funds. Every Democrat on the committee voted against that protection. That vote tells the truth more clearly than any press release.

So what exactly do these pregnancy centers do that triggers such outrage from the professional “choice” lobby?

Real compassion

They sit with women who feel terrified and alone. They provide free pregnancy tests. They give ultrasounds that show a tiny beating heart. They help enroll women in prenatal care. They offer parenting classes. They give out car seats, cribs, formula, wipes, and clothes.

That is the scandal. They stand between a desperate mother and a paid abortionist. They prove that poverty does not need a dead child as a solution. And because they do not sell abortions, they threaten the business model of the abortion industry.

Opponents like to talk about “fake clinics.” Let us talk instead about fake compassion. Real compassion does not shrug when a mother says, “I want my baby, but I have nothing.” Real compassion does not steer her straight to the one place that profits only if that baby disappears. Real compassion holds her hand, looks her in the eye, and says, “You are not alone. We will walk with you.”

That is what this bill protects.

Here is what comes next for H. R. 6945:

• House leadership needs to bring the bill to the floor for debate and a vote.

• If the House passes it, the Senate will hold the next key. The Senate can honor poor mothers and their children, or it can repeat the failure of the last Congress.

H.R. 6945 offers Congress something rare in this town. A clean moral line. On one side stand pregnancy centers, mothers, fathers, and babies. On the other side stand the people who think a welfare program should treat abortion as the only serious option.