By Justine Griffin

Annie Filkowski used to see the signs during her drive to school each morning. “Free pregnancy tests,” they said.

So when she feared she might be pregnant at 16, shortly after starting to have sex with her boyfriend, she remembered them. And walked into a center in Fort Myers.

Keisha Walters, saw the signs too, outside an old Tampa home on Armenia Avenue that had been converted into an office. Walters, 32, was pregnant for the first time and had lost her job. She felt alone, far away from her family in the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts.

“I didn’t even know what to ask for, or what I needed,” she said.

Both women had found their way to one of the 105 publicly subsidized “pregnancy support centers” in Florida, part of a network of mostly faith-based organizations that provide emotional support and limited medical services for unplanned pregnancies — while also working to prevent abortions.

But their experiences could not have been more different. Filkowski said she left feeling pressured and duped, while Walters found a welcoming source of help that she continues to rely on today.

The contrast goes to the heart of a simmering debate as Florida lawmakers prepare to make a key decision on the future of the centers: Should the state continue to fund them every year as part of the budget process, or give them a more exalted position by enshrining them in state law as a permanent program overseen by the Department of Health?

Welcome to the latest battleground in a long-running war over state government’s role in the abortion issue.

Many Floridians know of the centers from the now-familiar billboards that have lined the state’s rural highways for years, urging women to find options other than abortion, reminding them that a heartbeat begins just days into a pregnancy.

The centers are part of the Florida Pregnancy Care Network, which has received more than $21 million in state funding since 2007, according to the Florida Department of Health, including $4 million in the current fiscal year. With services that range from testing for sexually transmitted diseases to parental counseling, they are largely unregulated and can vary significantly depending on the location. Some employ nurse practitioners or physicians. Others rely on church volunteers to take ultrasound images, provide medical information with sometimes questionable accuracy and deliver a clear anti-abortion message.

Companion bills in the House and Senate that would make the centers a permanent fixture have drawn heavy criticism from groups like the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood.

“The funding for this network umbrella has steadily increased over the years to the tune of millions,” said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, whose members receive no state funding. “Women should have all the medically accurate information they’re seeking, without bias and without shaming. The women who have been to some of these pregnancy centers have felt this way and are later harassed for their decisions.”

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