Evelyn Konig doesn’t hide her faith.
In fact, it’s stamped all over the pregnancy resource center she runs: Christian quotes and Bible verses adorn the reception desk and the entrance to the ultrasound room, and pamphlets don’t hesitate to offer faith-based support groups to anyone who walks through the door.
“We tell them that it’s because of what God did for us, this is our Christian response to helping you, but we do not force it,” said Konig, executive director of the Keene-based Pregnancy Resource Center of the Monadnock Region. “We always ask, ‘Hey, we’re a faith-believing center. Can I pray for you?’”
Kellie Ljungholm, who runs the Care Women’s Center in Concord, takes a different approach. Hers is also a religious organization, but she said she tries to filter out her own Christian beliefs about abortion when helping pregnant women decide what to do.
They share a fundamental purpose, though: Pregnancy resource centers like these are pro-life ministries that offer consultations on pregnancy options and a range of other services. They do not provide or refer for abortions.
Abortion-rights activists call them “anti-abortion centers,” and some states have sought to place them under stricter rules. In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey waged a public education campaign against the centers, accusing them of misleading people about their services and dissuading them from pursuing abortions. In Vermont, lawmakers passed legislation in 2023 that subjected those centers in particular to the state’s false and misleading advertising laws, which activists disputed in court.
Now, ministries in New Hampshire are rallying behind preventative legislation that would keep state and local governments from enacting certain regulations, like requiring centers to perform or refer for abortions or prohibiting them from offering certain services.
House Bill 1416, proposed by Republican Rep. Sam Farrington of Rochester, passed in the House of Representatives earlier this month. Its language mirrors model legislation put forward by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a national religious and conservative advocacy group that opposes abortion. Four other states have either enacted or advanced similar bills in the past year.
At a public hearing last month, Farrington flagged it as a First Amendment issue.
“This is fundamentally a free-speech bill,” he said. “The government should not be coercing pregnancy resource centers to violate their moral conscience.”
Efforts to regulate these centers haven’t materialized in New Hampshire, where Republicans hold a solid majority in the State House. Nonetheless, pregnancy resource centers view themselves as being under attack, vulnerable to the whims of lawmakers who could try to control what they say to patients about abortion.
“As a faith-based Christian center that has a statement of faith, statement of purpose and a vision statement that all talks about God, why would they be imposing us to refer to something that goes against our Christian beliefs?” Konig asked. “It’s our constitutional right.”
Kayla Montgomery, vice president of public affairs for the Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund, doesn’t see the need for legislation. Bills like Farrington’s would protect against threats that haven’t transpired in the Granite State.
As the House approved this bill, the state Senate voted down a shield law for abortion clinics last week. Senate Bill 551 would’ve given New Hampshire providers legal protection from out-of-state prosecution, should they perform an abortion on someone from a state where it’s not legal. Montgomery noted the parallel.
“There’s no actual problem. It’s hypothetical legislative attack,” she said. “These attacks aren’t happening to crisis pregnancy centers, where they actually are happening to health care providers.”
What do these centers do?
The Care Women’s Center markets itself as an “abortion clinic alternative” — an option for people who don’t want to go to Planned Parenthood.
As a private, faith-based organization, the nurse staff and volunteers there offer ultrasounds, testing for sexually transmitted infections and parenting classes instead of offering or referring for abortions. They also run donor drives for baby clothes, toys, diapers and other items.
The center hosts faith-based “abortion recovery” workshops to help people deal with the emotional toll of terminating a pregnancy and counsels pregnant women on how to proceed, discussing options from parenting to adoption to abortion.
Ljungholm said adoption is uncommon. About 70% of her clients choose to parent, she estimated, and 30% choose abortion.
Although Ljungholm said she doesn’t let her own views filter into how she speaks about abortion with clients, legally, the First Amendment allows pregnancy resource centers to talk about abortion however they choose. Similarly, most of these centers are not bound by medical confidentiality laws because they aren’t considered health care providers, though Ljungholm said her staff and volunteers are trained to follow HIPAA compliance.
The Monadnock center, which provides many of the same services, operates under the umbrella of Care Net, a national network with more than 1,200 affiliated sites. Ljungholm’s organization was also previously named the Care Net Center of Greater Concord, but she said it is no longer affiliated because their missions did not align.
Care Net’s stated aim is to get women to keep their pregnancies. The group “offers compassion, hope and help to anyone considering abortion by presenting them with realistic alternatives,” according to its mission statement. Its website claims that Care Net centers have “saved more than 1 million babies from abortion.”
Ljungholm, however, feels that the perception of her center as a far-right, “Bible-thumping” conservative operation is misguided. She recognizes other centers may be run differently from hers, but she said her staff and volunteers aren’t allowed to insert their own views into conversations with clients or picket outside of abortion clinics.
“If I ever found out that anyone volunteering or working for me was giving their political opinion or their pro-life or pro-choice stance, I wouldn’t want them to be here,” Ljungholm said.
Both centers said that if someone talks to them about abortion, they try to educate them on the process, risks and alternatives. Konig said if someone doesn’t share her faith, she focuses on more practical questions: “Is a boyfriend pressuring you? … Do you feel like you’ll have to quit your job?”
Ljungholm tells clients to stock up on pain medication and towels and to expect heavy bleeding. She also warns them that they need to be prepared to see the fetus.
“You will see a baby,” Ljungholm said. “It would be tiny and obviously can’t survive out of the womb, but you will see it, so be thinking about what you want to do.”
Both directors said their doors are still open for people who get an abortion, though Konig said that path is rare after consultations at the Monadnock center.
“We still have to love the young lady, and it’s still her choice. We cannot force anybody to see it the way that we see it,” Konig said. “All we can do is give them the information and make sure that they are careful in their choice.”
Ideally, however, Konig said she wants to encourage women to keep their babies. While some view abortion rights as empowering, she wants to create an understanding space for people who don’t want an abortion.
“Although people want to have the choice to kill their baby,” Konig said, “it doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody is in that same place.”
‘Political messaging’
Windham Rep. Bob Lynn was one of six Republicans to vote with Democrats against Farrington’s bill. Though he identifies as “pro-choice,” he said he has no problem with pregnancy resource centers or how they operate.
The former chief justice of the state Supreme Court and head of the House Judiciary Committee, however, tries to be consistent with his votes. When Democrats proposed legislation in recent years to create an affirmative right to abortion up to 24 weeks — it wouldn’t have changed current state law, which prohibits abortions after 24 weeks — Lynn voted against it.
He said he saw the legislation as “political messaging,” and he sees Farrington’s bill in the same way.
“One of the things that I think both of those bills try to do, which I think is not a good idea, is just try to kind of continue the battle,” Lynn said.
He believes most Granite Staters are satisfied with the current laws surrounding abortion. Bills aimed at moving the needle, he said, serve more of a political goal than a practical one.
“It doesn’t serve any useful purpose to keep having these little skirmishes on one side or the other: ‘Well, let’s see if we can move the ball just a little bit this way’ or ‘Let’s see if we can move the ball just a little bit that way,'” Lynn said. “I don’t think that’s productive.”
What’s next: House Bill 1416 passed, 176-163, earlier this month. It now heads to the Senate, where the Judiciary Committee has not yet scheduled a public hearing.
