Tax credit law aids state’s pro-life climate
JEFFERSON CITY – Gov. Matt Blunt signed into law tax credits for pregnancy resource centers on July 11 as he toured various pro-life facilities in Columbia, St. Louis, Lee’s Summit, Springfield and Joplin.
The state’s approximately 30 evangelical pregnancy resource centers and 30 birthright centers stand to benefit greatly from the new law, which will increase the amount of funds available to them by $2 million annually. Last year this would have totaled $1.4 million in tax credits, according to the governor’s office.
A tax credit worth half the value of donations between $100 and $50,000, as administered by the Department of Social Services, will be legal under the new law.
“Our children are our future,” the governor said in a written statement. “I am pleased to sign this bill to offer them a chance at life and hope in their time of crisis. This bill helps reinforce the valuable pro-life legislation passed last year and ensures families in crisis have access to available resources.”
Last year Blunt called a special session of the Missouri General Assembly to address pro-life legislation and wound up signing a bill that strengthened Missouri’s parental consent law. The 2005 law also required physicians who perform abortions to have hospital privileges within 30 miles of the clinic where they operate and specified that a “next friend,” or someone who has the authority to provide consent for abortions for minors, cannot be another minor or someone who would benefit from the abortion.
Pro-life lobbyists point to the 30-mile provision of that law as the reason why the only abortion clinic in Springfield shut down last October. That building on East Cherry Street has since been donated to the Springfield Pregnancy Care Center.
Blunt, a Southern Baptist whose home church is Second Baptist in Springfield, is quietly undoing the pro-abortion policies of previous governors while refusing to take credit for things like the closure of the Springfield abortion clinic that are happening along the way.
In Columbia, the governor visited Open Arms Pregnancy Resource Center, which is located across the street from one of the two remaining abortion clinics in Missouri, which are both operated by Planned Parenthood.
“I clearly believe that your money would be better spent here than at Planned Parenthood,” Blunt said in remarks reported by the Columbia Daily Tribune.