According to the anti-abortion behemoth Heartbeat International, the number of maternity homes has jumped nearly 40 percent in the past two years. Today there are more than 450 throughout the United States, at least 27 in Florida alone. The homes provide much-needed help to women and teens in desperate straits, including victims of abuse, people struggling with substance use problems, and kids aging out of the foster care system. But as Reveal’s Laura Morel reports in a blockbuster story with the New York Times, Florida allows most of those maternity homes to operate “without state standards or state oversight,” even as many of them impose “strict conditions that limit [women’s] communications, their financial decisions, and even their movements.”
The result, one woman told Morel, can be “dehumanizing, almost like we were criminals, not single mothers.”
Among the restrictions Morel found at various homes? Requiring residents to attend morning prayer and to obtain permission before leaving the premises, confiscating their phones at night, compelling them to obtain a pastor’s approval to have romantic relationships, and ordering them to hand over their food stamps to pay for communal groceries.
Sounds similar to the domestic violence shelter I went to. And the counselor bring my confidentiality of something I said in private by sharing it during a group session.