Last Thursday, Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) teamed up with fellow Republican Senators Kevin Cramer (ND) and Marco Rubio (FL) to unveil the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act aimed at giving pregnant women a federally-backed “clearinghouse” of resources — called Pregnancy.gov — for “expecting and postpartum moms, as well as those with young children,” and create grants for caregiving organizations helping women enter the world of parenting.
Along with expanding child support to include a woman’s pregnancy, a press release from the senators said the MOMS Act would “provide critical support to women during typically challenging phases of motherhood – prenatal, postpartum, and early childhood development – and bolster access to resources and assistance to help mothers and their children thrive.”
Not surprisingly, the far-left, abortion-loving liberal media have decided to be as focused on defeating this pro-life bill with misinformation as they were about pushing women to murder their unborn children.
In story after story, the liberal media have claimed the bill would create a database of women currently pregnant for the federal government - in some liberal dystopia/twisted fantasy – to surveil women to prevent abortions. The problem? It’s all voluntary and shy from divulging one’s location.
The Guardian went full send with a headline beyond parody: “Katie Britt proposes federal database to collect data on pregnant people; Republican US senator from Alabama best known for delivering widely ridiculed State of the Union speech in March”.
Writer Léonie Chao-Fong doubled down with a disregard for biology, claiming without evidence the bill “create[s] a federal database to collect data on pregnant people” by having them “enter their personal data and contact information.”
Chao-Fong also whined: “[t]he bill specifically forbids any entity that ‘performs, induces, refers for, or counsels in favor of abortions’ from being listed in the database, which would in effect eliminate swaths of OB-GYN services and sexual health clinics across the country.”
Yes, Léonie, the point is to give women facing sudden pregnancies options beyond abortion.
NBCNews.com and longtime Rachel Maddow producer Steve Benen piled on in a story whining about the bill giving federal funds to pro-life pregnancy crisis centers and pedaled the lie about HHS becoming a surveillance agency (click “expand”):
This is, to be sure, standard GOP fare. Republican officials tend to be uncomfortable with the idea that the party’s sole focus in this area is imposing abortion restrictions, and the MOMS Act appears designed to package familiar GOP measures on the issue.
The fact that these senators intend to extend grants to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” is part of the conservative agenda, and a reminder of why the legislation doesn’t have — and won’t have — any Democratic support in the chamber.
But a HuffPost report noted that the Pregnancy.gov provisions in the bill are drawing additional scrutiny because they allegedly raise the prospect of “a federal database storing information on pregnant people.”
It was against this backdrop that Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington joined with 10 other Senate Democratic women to denounce Britt’s bill, saying it would, among other things, “create a new government-run website to collect data on pregnant women and direct them to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.”
To be sure, Britt’s office has thoroughly rejected the idea that the legislation is designed to create some kind of “registry,” but the press release from the 11 Senate Democratic women added that under the Pregnancy.gov plan, the website would “encourage users to provide their contact information, ‘which the Secretary may use to conduct outreach via phone or email to follow up with users’ — meaning that pregnant women would be encouraged to provide data to a potential Trump administration and potentially allow a government bureaucrat to follow up with them about the status of their pregnancy.”
The tools at HuffPost did the same in a piece with the headline “Critics Rip Sen. Katie Britt For Celebrating Moms With ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Like Proposal” and hilariously then referred to women as “pregnant people”.
Yahoo! News promptly cross-posted this under the same headline.
Salon and Raw Story weren’t going to be left out either. Cue the laugh tracks for the latter’s headline: “Katie Britt shredded for ‘Handmaid’s Tale’-type proposal to ‘register’ pregnant women”.
At Salon, they melted down at women even being told groups that support women and babies exit: “The bill also outlines the creation of a database of ‘pregnancy support centers,’ or crisis centers, which critics say provide women with misleading information in an effort to keep them from having abortions.”
Someone call GLAAD on HuffPost, NBC, Raw Story, and the like for using the term “pregnant women!”
Now, for the facts. Here was a piece from the (now digital-only) Alabama newspaper conglomerate AL.com:
Britt spokesman Sean Ross said users are not required to register or log in to the site to search for resources. The website will not ask for the user’s pregnancy status or for personally identifiable information.
“These social media posts are intentionally, flagrantly false,” Ross said.
Website users could voluntarily enter their contact information if they wanted personal follow up from a staff member at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Those services would also be available to friends and family members who are not pregnant if an individual was worried about sharing her information with the website. The website would invite users to take an assessment and provide consent to be contacted.
The website would not require people to take the assessment to receive more information about local resources, Ross said.
“Through the website, anyone can view the relevant resources in a given locale without disclosing any personally identifiable information to the government,” Ross said.
The headline, however, only met Britt halfway with a scoffing headline: “Claims that bill would create registry of pregnant women ‘flagrantly false,’ says staff for Alabama Sen. Katie Britt.”