Last week, the Pueblo Board of County Commissioners approved a $650 payment to sponsor a 10-person table at A Caring Pregnancy Center’s annual fundraiser next month. On July 8, the Pueblo City Council voted 5-1 to spend $1,500 to sponsor the event.
During a July 18 Pueblo County Commission work session, Commissioner Daneya Esgar, a Democrat, expressed concern about the $4,650 funding request from A Caring Pregnancy Center. Republican commissioners Epimenio “Eppie” Griego and Zach Swearingen agreed the initial $4,650 request was not within the budget, but overruled Esgar to spend the $650 during the July 30 work session.
“In their volunteer staff application, they specifically call themselves a ‘ministry,’ … I just want to make sure we’re not crossing lines in giving money to a religious entity,” said Esgar. “The other concern I had is the sponsorship levels literally say, ‘Protector of life sponsor.’ This is a big fundraiser that they do, but their focus, including their keynote speaker, is around abortion and I don’t know if we need to be wading into that as a county, and that we need to be providing funds to this. If anybody wants to go on their own, great, but I don’t know if we need to be putting county funds into anything that could be divisive.”
According to A Caring Pregnancy Center’s statement of principles, the center is “an outreach ministry of Jesus Christ through His church. Therefore, ACPC, embodied in its volunteers, is committed to presenting the gospel of our Lord to those who seek help through ACPC, both in word and in deed. Commensurate with this purpose, those who labor as ACPC board members, directors and volunteers are expected to know Christ as their Savior and Lord.”
The Sept. 6 banquet will feature keynote speaker and anti-abortion activist Melissa Ohden, founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, and Jor-El Godsey, the president of Heartbeat International, a “network of pro-life pregnancy resource centers.” A Caring Pregnancy Center is run by Tamra Axworthy, who in 2017 vied to be appointed by a GOP vacancy committee to fill a House seat held by State Rep. Clarice Navarro (R-Pueblo), who resigned to join the Trump Administration. Axworthy, alongside Rep. Stephanie Luck (R-Penrose), was also listed on the board of Forging Pueblo, the Christian dominionist group that tried to stop a Pueblo abortion clinic from opening in 2022.
“If we can make this a sanctuary city for the unborn, that would be awesome,” said Pueblo City Councilor Regina Maestri, who voted to approve the $1,500 to A Caring Pregnancy Center, during a Nov. 14, 2022 council meeting. “At least open the conversation to the needs of our city. It seems like Hobbs, New Mexico, just passed an ordinance just last week. Not reversing — we can’t fight the law that’s already in place, right to abortion — but, you know, if we’re truly about women’s health and we want to make it a woman’s health issue, I think we should take the opportunity to try to regulate and license it here in this city.”
Esgar noted that the recent expenditures from Pueblo City and County governments weren’t the only funds going to the anti-abortion pregnancy center. “The other point I was concerned about was the amount of money CSAC [Community Services Advisory Commission] has already given them,” she said. “Since 2020 there was $5,000, 2021 $17,000, 2022 $38,000, 2023 there was $30,000, and just this year they were given $36,000.”
According to recent reporting from CBS, “Equity Forward, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on issues including reproductive rights, analyzed budgets from 23 states that dedicate public funding to what are known as crisis pregnancy centers — groups that offer counseling and support services to pregnant women while trying to dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies. The study found that since 1995, those states sent more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds to such centers and that nearly half of that money, or $489 million, was appropriated in the last two years.”
Colorado does not provide state funding for anti-abortion pregnancy centers, and in 2023 passed legislation to address deceptive trade practices of centers, such as so-called “abortion pill reversal.” The bill is currently being challenged in court by Bella Health and Wellness, a Catholic healthcare provider.
“Another way to look at them is as the storefront of the anti-abortion movement,” said Ashley Underwood, the director of Equity Forward, during a 2023 webinar with members of Colorado pro-abortion groups COLOR, Cobalt, and New Era Colorado. “The term ‘AAC'[Anti-Abortion Center] is not solely a reference to their activity of delaying and deterring people from abortion care. We know that, unfortunately, AACs are sometimes the only shop in town engaging with pregnant people in need, and that a sizable percentage of people interacting with these centers are doing so with the intent of receiving diapers, formula or other material assistance for continuing their pregnancy or for their existing children. When we say ‘anti-abortion center’ or ‘anti-abortion,’ we are referring to the many moving pieces of the anti-abortion movement writ large that back these centers. We are calling out the fact that these centers are largely staffed by volunteers who have been mobilized by anti-abortion advocacy groups and by medical staff, entirely opposed to offering unbiased health care. We are referring to the policymakers that advocate for public funding of these centers without any sort of oversight or requirements to provide evidence of their impact. And who oftentimes are the very same policymakers pushing for abortion bans and the criminalization of abortion providers and patients.”
