Thanks to blogger Billy Townsend, I learned about the Florida Center for Government Accountability and its publication, The Florida Trident. This organization shines a bright light on government corruption. I am sending a donation to encourage their great work.
Just when Florida’s forces of gross grift seem to enjoy total impunity, the Florida Center for Government Accountability takes down the Zieglers, beats DeSantis in court, and becomes a new sheriff.
FCGA uncovered the scandalous Ziegler family threesome, which led to Christian Ziegler being forced out as state chair of the GOP and caused some embarrassing moments for his wife Bridget, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty and an outspoken critic of gays.
FCGA recently posted about the state’s deceptive marketing to women who search for abortion providers on the Internet. If they choose an “abortion center” funded by the state, they will fall into the clutches of anti-abortion zealots, likely evangelicals, who will try to persuade them not to have an abortion.
This article appears on The Florida Trident:
An image from a state-funded anti-abortion center website.
When Abby learned she was pregnant, the first thing she did was look online for support. As a college student in a small town in northwest Florida, she thought the Internet was her best hope to find help for her unplanned pregnancy with a boyfriend who had become abusive.
Sifting through Google’s search results, she stumbled on an online-chat providing support for people in need of abortion care. The chat operator stressed the importance of a pregnancy test and referred her to a nearby pregnancy center in Deland called the Grace House.
The center’s website welcomed people like Abby who didn’t have insurance and asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns. She scheduled a visit for the following day – a day she said she’ll never forget.
The horrific visit ended with Abby sobbing as center employees systematically pressured her to continue her pregnancy, prayed over her belly, and promised her free baby care products if she would come back for more “counseling.”
“I deserved legitimate medical care and compassion,” said Abby. “But I know in that room, they didn’t see me or my future. They just saw a positive pregnancy test.”
The staffers at Grace House were not there to help her receive abortion care, but instead to convince her and all others who enter the center for care to complete their pregnancy and be saved by Christianity in the process.
“I was fooled by this facility in a moment of vulnerability and desperation and trusting the wrong people,” Abby said.
The same “wrong people” are funded by the state’s Florida Pregnancy Support Services Program, which provides taxpayers’ money to more than 100 anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)” around the state. The stated goal of the program is to convince clients to carry their pregnancies to term rather than having abortions.
As previously reported in an ongoing Florida Trident investigative series, the centers, including Grace House, are Christian-based organizations and often identify themselves as “ministries” and “missions.” Several legal experts have said the program runs afoul of the U.S. and Florida constitutions, the latter of which expressly forbids the state from aiding religious organizations.
Despite its inherent problems, the program is now bursting at the seams in Florida. Its annual budget has ballooned from $4 million to $25 million a year, an increase written into the controversial six-week abortion ban legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April.
Included in that funding explosion is a quadrupling of the program’s advertising budget to nearly $1 million a year, according to state records, paid out via the Florida Pregnancy Care Network, the non-profit tasked with administering the program for the state.
Kurt Filla, owner of the Michigan-based company, Filla Life Media, snared the state-funded advertising contract. Filla, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, is an outspoken conspiracy theorist who has backed false QAnon and vaccine tropes on the Internet and has written that the 2020 election was stolen, that God sends him angels and he’s heard the devil talk in his head, and that “global elites” are secretly trying to make people “impotent and immobile.”
Jenifer McKenna, an activist with the Reproductive Health Accountability Fund at Hopewell, said the steep funding hike and hiring of ideologically radical companies like Filla Life are part of a trend in “abortion-hostile” states like Florida to divert tax dollars to CPCs and “ramp up targeted digital marketing to track down pregnant people, talk them out of abortion, and collect their sensitive data.”
“Researchers are calling the post-Roe landscape an ‘abortion infodemic’ with CPCs playing a leading role,” said McKenna, adding that the centers use “extensive digital strategies to intercept pregnant people seeking care, sow confusion, spread disinformation and obstruct access.”
After an initial visit, which at some clinics includes an ultrasound where individual center staffers pray for the fetus, clients are urged to return for “counseling” and parenting classes. In fact, while the state bills the centers as health care providers, a whopping 87.5% of program reimbursements go for counseling and classes, a Trident analysis of state records found. A significant portion of the new $20 million in annual spending will fund a doubling of the amount the state reimburses the centers for counseling from $75 an hour to $150 an hour, state records show.
To put the $150 hourly rate in perspective, the state reimburses registered nurses – who actually have formalized education and training for the critical work they do – only $32.07 per home health care visit, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. Home health aides, who lack the RN’s credentials, are reimbursed a scant $18.04 per visit by the state.
When told of that increase, Amy Weintraub, who serves as reproductive rights director for the non-profit Progress Florida, called it “atrocious.” She noted that the “counselors” at the centers have no training or education requirements and are often hired based largely on their Christian faith.
“The fact that [state-funded pregnancy centers] are even allowed to use the word ‘counselor’ is such an affront because … they are not trained counselors,” said Weintraub.
That’s something Abby said she found out the hard way.
“Oh, She’s Abortion-Minded”
A random online search for abortion in Fort Lauderdale turns up a website for the Hope Women’s Centers, which received $100,000 in state funding last year. Its website promises “free abortion information” and “consultations on abortion pills, surgical abortion procedures, and emergency contraceptives.”
Yet like all other state-funded pregnancy crisis centers, Hope, which is strongly aligned with the Rio Vista Church, has two goals: to dissuade clients from having an abortion and to try to save their souls. None of that is mentioned in the online material.
It was the same in Abby’s case when she went to Grace House, which recently changed its name to Coastal Choices Women’s Clinic, a moniker that belies the fact that it vehemently opposes choice and isn’t a bona fide health clinic. The Trident left a detailed message for comment with a receptionist at Coastal; a promised return call was not received prior to publication.
“There is no Planned Parenthood in my county, so I thought it was a smaller version of it,” said Abby. “And they said if you were considering abortion to come on in, so I felt that was an invitation.”
Once inside, she was given a form to fill out with questions about her faith, her intimate relationships, even what her college grades looked like. It was the first clue she was inside a Christian ministry instead of a bona fide health clinic.
“That gave me a little bit of a pause,” Abby said. “But it wasn’t until the actual counseling session that I deeply regretted walking in the doors.”
She’d written in the form that she wanted an abortion.
“I watched a group of maybe three staff or volunteers crowd around my paper,” she said. “And I hear them say something to the effect of, ‘Oh, she’s abortion-minded, I’ll take her.’”
In the counseling session that followed, which she attended with her partner, Abby took a pregnancy test that was kept hidden while staff pressed her for 40 minutes about her personal life. She said the staffers told her she was in no position to make the decision about an abortion for herself.
When her partner was out of the room, Abby confided that she was in an abusive relationship. She said the counselor advised her to stay with her partner because the baby would give her purpose and help him step up as a man, and urged him, when Abby was outside the room, to stop her from getting an abortion because the procedure could kill her.
After the test came back positive, Abby was handed her due date and a small replica of a fetus. A staffer asked her what she might name the baby. Distraught, Abby began sobbing.
“There was so much talking over me when I was clearly having a breakdown,” Abby recalled. “[One staffer] starts praying over my stomach, she’s touching my stomach the whole time, and saying that I can start right away taking their parenting classes to earn baby bucks for their boutique to get baby clothes. And all the while I’m just so terrified.”
The experience was a far cry from the online promises, a contrast Weintraub said is common. The most fundamental deception in the advertising is the centers’ posing as health clinics when they don’t actually offer comprehensive reproductive health care services, she said.
“They strip their web sites of anti-abortion lingo so that the intended victims will not realize that the place they are visiting is an anti-abortion center,” said Weintraub. “All kinds of tricky language is used to cloak their true intention.”
Now Filla Life Media, under the leadership of its extremist owner, is set to receive $1 million a year from Florida taxpayers for its marketing prowess.
Tax-Payer Funded Anti-Abortion Marketing Agencies
Filla Life Media is a member of a national network called the Pro-Life Marketing Ethics Council made up of “unified Christ-centered and holistically pro-life” companies dedicated to promoting marketing strategies “grounded in biblical principles and informed by cutting-edge best practices.”
A key strategy of the Florida program is to boost its anti-abortion clinics in Google search results and place ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. State documents show the aim of the campaign is to “generate leads and inquiries” from pregnant people and that it uses “marketing strategies … with the goal of enabling her to carry the pregnancy to term and choose parenting or adoption.”
The new Filla Life marketing campaign is set to be the most aggressive to date, targeting women aged between 18 and 44 years old across Florida. Many of the ads specifically target teens and the uninsured.
The campaign will employ the latest in tracking technology and will leverage behavioral data—like what people are or are not doing in an app, on a website, or how they interact with campaigns—to personalize the message.
FPCN ads that appear at the top of Google searches for “unplanned pregnancy” or “pregnancy test” promise “Compassionate Counseling,” “Judgement-Free Pregnancy Support” and ”Pregnancy Pill Help.” Of 134 Google ads purchased this year by marketing companies on behalf of the state program reviewed by the Trident, only three explicitly warned the centers don’t provide abortions.
While the new ad campaign is super-charged, it’s nothing new. For years, Floridians’ tax dollars have gone to anti-abortion marketing agencies with little to no transparency. Before Filla Life, an Illinois-based company called Caledon, and its subdivision Choose Life Marketing, held the advertising contract.
The digital tactics promoted by Choose Life, alongside other anti-abortion marketing agencies, sparked a congressional investigation in 2022 that cited a number of the company’s tactics, including geofencing strategies, which use sensitive data from abortion seekers to facilitate government surveillance, harassment, intimidation and even violence. The company also featured prominently in a report issued by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which exposed the deceptive tactics of several anti-abortion marketing agencies.
Those marketing strategies also involved so-called “right-brain research” peddled by the Vitae Foundation, an anti-abortion research organization. Vitae uses extensive interviews with previously pregnant people involving repetition and relaxation techniques to “access the emotional mind and uncover deeply seated emotional needs and barriers,” according to its promotional materials.
“By studying the right side of the brain, which controls the emotional, intuitive and creative aspects of the person, Vitae was able to focus on women’s hidden, emotional response to pregnancy, abortion and motherhood,” the foundation explained in a report.
A key finding of the foundation is that “women carry an unwanted pregnancy to term when guilt wins out over shame,” a concept used by pro-life marketing agencies to craft their messaging to “abortion-minded women.”
To continue reading the article, open the link. It’s shameful that the state of Florida spends millions to tell women that they should not get an abortion, no matter how much they want one.
Ron DeSantis likes to boast about “freedom” in Florida, but apparently you are not free unless you agree with him.
Teachers of Black history are not free to teach the truth. Librarians are not free to use their professional judgment about books. Gays and trans kids are not free to live their lives. Drag queens are not free to perform their acts.
Women in Florida are not free to make major decisions about their own lives.
Pro-choice groups in Florida have gathered enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot in November. But the hyper-conservative state Supreme Court must give its approval before the referendum can go forward. There have already been suggestions that the measure may be stricken because it says abortion should be legal until the fetus reaches “viability,” and critics say that the term is vague. Keep watching.
These extreme right fascists are not Christians. They lie to achieve their goals. They cheat. They threaten…
How many of these have they broken:
You shall have no other gods before Me.
They worship Traitor Trump
You shall make no idols.
Their idol looks like Traitor Trump or is on a flag with one word TRUMP
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
When Traitor Trump mention’s God’s name claiming God sent him here, that counts as breaking this commandment.
Keep the Sabbath day holy.
Honor your father and your mother.
Traitor Trump never honored his father, mother or anyone in his family unless they were blindly loyal to him and let him rob them into poverty.
You shall not murder.
If an abortion would save a woman’s life, they don’t care if she dies
They don’t wear masks during a pandemic and infect others
They refuse the vaccine during a pandemic and infect others in public
Hundreds of thousands died who didn’t need to.
You shall not commit adultery.
This list would be too long so let it suffice that many of these fascists break this in secret as often as possible. Trump is at the top of that and since they worship Trump, he’s one of them.
You shall not steal.
Trump steals and so do they. Every chance they get.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Trump bears false witness on everyone he thinks is his enemy, all the time, and these fascists do to.
You shall not covet.
Traitor Trump covets the United States and his supporters are guilty by supporting him
Thanks, Lloyd! TRUE.
“…systematically pressured her to continue her pregnancy, prayed over her belly, and promised her free baby care products if she would come back for more “counseling.””
Tim Alberta suggested in a recent Firing Line interview that Christians were generally viewed positively 50 years ago by non-Christians. The attitude was: “I don’t believe what you believe, but I appreciate your wanting to do good for people.” He went on to blame the Falwellian move to the political realm for the almost universal condemnation of Christianity by non-Christians. The above scene describes what he is talking about.
This sort of prayer is too weird for many people, but it pales by comparison to the evangelical practice of supporting Trump. The support of Trump threatens democratic principles in that it teaches denial of judicial legitimacy as a part of religion. This is decidedly against the ideals of the founding fathers, who viewed religion through the lens of the 30 years war as interpreted in the English press of the 17th century. This event was so cathardic for English Protestants, watching genocide practiced on protestants in the Austrian Empire, that it inspired the Puritan Revolution as well as John Locke’s views on the separation of logical and theological thought, a framework for his rejection of the idea of divine right of kings. The modern evangelical acceptance of Trump and the unity in that matter with conservative Roman Catholics is based almost completely on the appointment of anti-abortion judges. Now that they have caught the car, the dogs do not know what to do but seem content to sit panting happily while others debate the nuances of deciding what attitude is right concerning potential life. It is dangerous to both Christianity and democracy.
As with a great many questions, there are actually scientific ones to the questions of when a fetus is viable and when a baby is a sentient, conscious creature. The answers to these questions do not correspond with many people’s maps of reality.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/
cx: As with a great may questions, there are actually scientific answers to the . . .
Misleading, misrepresenting, hiding the truth from the public, joining with religious extremists and over spending public dollars are all hallmarks of the DeSantis administration. He is so manipulative and driven he wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the head.
Hard to imagine that a leading Repugnican like Ron Ron would mislead or misrepresent anything in the age of Trump the Truth Teller, always Truthing out his Truths on Truth Social to a Truth-hungry following. This is called Truthing, btw, as in, “Wow, Donnie was truthing a lot at 4:00 in the morning today!”
Trump’s handler Tsar Vladimir, btw, grew up with the major propaganda organ of The Party being called Pravda, Russian for Truth. Maybe Donnie gave him a call to discuss possible names for his new alternative to the Xit-show that used to be called Twiter.
Twitter
You gotta feel for Abby. How did she miss the disclaimer
on the center’s website?
DISCLAIMER
Coastal Choices Women’s Clinic in DeLand, Florida, is a non-profit Community Health Clinic specializing in pregnancy confirmation and helping those facing unintended pregnancy explore their options. We do not provide extended OB/GYN or prenatal care nor do we perform or refer for abortion services, the abortion pill, emergency contraception, or birth control. The information presented on this website is intended for general education purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional and/or medical advice.
If “she thought the Internet was her best hope to find help…”,
OUCH!
You gotta feel for Abby.
These centers pay so they rise in a Google search. A distraught person may not be reading the fine print, especially if her partner is controlling / abusive.
By the way, these centers have been collecting TANF dollars. The Biden administration wants to put an end to this, but the GOP opposes doing so.
The rule would prohibit states from sending federal funds earmarked for needy Americans to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” which counsel against abortions. At stake are millions of dollars in federal funds that currently flow to the organizations through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, a block grant program created in 1996 to give cash assistance to poor children and prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/gop-tries-to-block-proposed-federal-rule-that-restricts-funds-for-anti-abortion-centers
Re: abortion.
My view.
If you are opposed to abortion, don’t have one.
If you think that abortion is a personal decision, do what is right for you and your family.
What I oppose: those who would force everyone else to live by their rules.
Like book banning. A parent should decide if she doesn’t want her children reading certain books. But she should not have the power to force her views on all parents in the district or state.
I think that the NEPC report on parental control over public school curricula is simply brilliant!
However, it is crucial to recognize that public schools serve broader societal goals, aiming to educate a diverse population for active participation in democratic civic culture. While policymakers should listen to parental concerns, they must avoid crafting policies that undermine overarching societal objectives, seeking a balance that serves the greater community without compromising the fundamental purpose of public education.
https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/parents-rights
This need to control how others live their lives is antithetical to life in a democracy.
The Repugnican Party doesn’t give a Trump about democracy. They are all about male, white oligarchy.