The Crisis Pregnancy Center Creation Story

Segregation academies lost their tax-exempt status at the same time contraception and abortion access proliferated in the 1970s. Racists had to find new defensible manifestations of whiteness as contraception and abortion lowered the white birth rate, at the same time the immigration of non-white people increased in the United States. Racists and anti-abortion activists, white conservatives that previously coalesced around separate but complementary priorities, colluded around a common cause and found a way to use federal infrastructure dollars to protect white life at a discounted price: highway infrastructure and crisis pregnancy centers.

I introduce their relationship, and provide visualizations of the growth of crisis pregnancy centers across Texas in this presentation. As of May 2024, across the United States crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion providers four to one.