An Oklahoma anti-abortion nonprofit received a lucrative payout from the State Department of Health in 2024 and is now reporting its impact.
The Oklahoma Life Foundation (OKLF) advocates for anti-abortion policies and services. Supporting crisis pregnancy centers, also known to abortion rights activists as “fake clinics,” OKLF perpetuates misinformation about pregnancy and contraception.
Oklahoma’s Choosing Childbirth program was created by Republican lawmakers to fund crisis pregnancy centers, churches, and other anti-abortion groups. First created in 2017, this program was preemptively established to support these organizations ahead of inevitable abortion bans post-Dobbs.
Choosing Childbirth allocated $18 million to the Oklahoma Life Foundation in 2024, equating to one-third of the entire program’s budget.
Acting as a grant-supervising entity, OKLF distributes funds to service providers across the state and is responsible for monitoring and vetting the organizations that receive their funding. Additionally, these nonprofits are exempt from processing through the State Department of Health.
Paul Abner, the executive director of the Oklahoma Life Foundation, is a politically active minister. In 2023, he collaborated with lobbyists representing Catholic bishops to sponsor anti-abortion legislation, including measures that define life at the first detectable heartbeat, effectively criminalizing abortion by imposing felony charges on both providers and patients.
Abner previously stated that OKLF plans to distribute $5.1 million of their funding to support pregnancy centers and churches that he has previously worked with.
OKLF has zeroed in on Her First Women’s Health, a new telehealth network promoting anti-abortion services, whose mission is described as empowering women “to act heroically to save lives from the evil of abortion.”
According to CEO Brett Attebery, Her First intends to direct its funding toward advertising and operational expenses. OKLF has allocated nearly $500,000 to the organization, aiming to reach over 75% of Oklahoma’s female population.
Her First’s outreach page, entitled Your Abortion Choice, camouflages itself as a pro-choice resource. Promoting their “medically-accurate abortion information,” this website intentionally misleads women seeking abortions into pro-birth messaging.
Attebery told The Frontier, “When women call Her First’s advertised phone number, they’re routed to a call center in Tennessee…a call center agent or registered nurse will assess the woman’s needs and connect them to local organizations for free, including ones listed in an online directory of ‘life-affirming’ providers.”
These misleading services, combined with the state’s near-total abortion ban, leaves women in Oklahoma with little to no choices.
The Oklahoma Life Foundation’s deep entanglement with public funding, religious advocacy, and anti-abortion misinformation reflects a broader strategy to reshape reproductive healthcare access in the state. By driving millions of dollars into ideologically driven organizations like Her First Women’s Health, OKLF is expanding an anti-abortion infrastructure that, according to abortion rights activists, actively undermines informed consent and limits legitimate medical options.
With limited oversight and a near-total abortion ban already in place, these state-backed efforts leave Oklahoman women increasingly isolated from comprehensive reproductive care and with fewer real choices than ever before.
