U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) denounced government efforts to thwart pregnancy help and praised the organizations that provide it on Capitol Hill Monday after introducing a bill to protect their right to serve women.
Smith, along with Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Michelle Fischbach (R-MN) announced the Let Pregnancy Centers Serve Act of 2025 at a press conference, joined by pregnancy help personnel from Smith’s state of New Jersey, others local to the Washington D.C. area, and representatives of pregnancy help networks and other pro-life groups.
The bill will prohibit federal, state, and local governments from discriminating against pregnancy centers due to their life-affirming mission.
Pregnancy Help News spoke with Smith following the press conference, where the pro-life lawmaker discussed government attacks and the positive impact of pregnancy help.
“There's no doubt that the abortion lobby and pro-abortion states like New Jersey, California, and New York are aggressively trying to shut down every pregnancy care center in the country,” Smith said.
“Planned Parenthood, this is their ask - their demand, it's not an ask - of these politicians, who bend like the wind to whatever Planned Parenthood wants them to do,” he added.
Smith said his own state government along so many others are “wholly owned subsidiaries of Planned Parenthood.”
“They say to do something, they do it,” Smith told Pregnancy Help News. “They (even) give them the language on what to do. It is really disgusting, but it's there.”
“So, we’ve got to push back very hard to protect life,” he said.
Smith remarked on how previous President Joe Biden had initially been with the pro-life cause for years on funding but then later capitulated and went “all in with the abortion lobby.”
Keeping with his consistent and ardent defense of pregnancy help, Smith said, “Pregnancy care centers are an oasis of love and compassion, a refuge for women. And nobody on the face of the earth does it better in terms of caring for those who are at great risk of vulnerability than pregnancy resource centers.”
Tweet This: Pregnancy care centers are an oasis of love and compassion, a refuge for women.
Tweet This: Nobody on the face of the earth does it better in terms of caring for those who are at great risk of vulnerability than pregnancy centers.
Asked what message he has for the pregnancy help movement, Smith responded, “I would say, “Keep on.””
Smith said that without pregnancy centers and “the amazing, mostly women, who run them,” the death toll from abortion and equally the number of women who would be carrying around the physical, psychological, and spiritual scars of abortion is essentially incalculable.
“So, there's nothing more important I think in the entire pro-life movement than pregnancy care centers,” he said.
Tweet This: There's nothing more important I think in the entire pro-life movement than pregnancy care centers.
Smith recalled when I first got involved in the pro-life movement in 1972, hearing about the group Birthright, founded in Canada, and the moment he realized that pregnancy help was the answer to abortion.
“And it was like, wow, what an idea,” he said. “Victor Hugo said, there's nothing as compelling as an idea whose time has come. Pregnancy care centers are that.”
“And now we have so many different organizations that network, (and have) high standards, and they are international, like Heartbeat,” Smith said. “And do an amazing job all over the world to protect women and children from the violence of abortion.”
Smith and his pro-life colleagues plan to ask for a hearing for Let Pregnancy Centers Serve Act of 2025 in hopes of bringing the bill to the House floor for debate.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
