The recent controversy at the University of Notre Dame surrounding the promotion of a vocal abortion advocate to a leadership role seems to have run its immediate course, with the announcement that Professor Susan Ostermann has declined the appointment to lead the University’s Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.
But the claims that gave rise to the controversy remain very much a live issue and bear further discussion.
As a proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame and president of March for Life, I’m grateful for the way my alma mater formed both my intellect and my conscience. Notre Dame taught me that truth matters, that human dignity is not negotiable and that where we see an injustice being done, we should work to right it.
It is in the spirit of what I learned at Notre Dame that I must address one element of the recent controversy at the university: Ostermann’s repeated public claims about pregnancy resource centers, which cannot be permitted to stand — especially with the name of Our Lady’s University attached to them. Her allegations are inflammatory, unsupported, and deeply irresponsible.
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In a May 2024 Chicago Tribune commentary, Ostermann and her co-authors described pregnancy resource centers as “anti-abortion rights propaganda sites” that “provide false information to women who are lured to them believing they will receive legitimate medical care.” In an earlier piece, she asserted that PRCs are “specifically designed to deceive pregnant people,” calling their work “coercive.”
These are serious claims. They are also wrong.
Across the U.S., more than 2,700 PRCs provide essential care to women. Most are nonprofit organizations staffed by a combination of licensed medical professionals and trained volunteers.
According to data released in 2025 by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, PRCs nationwide provided more than $350 million in free medical services, material assistance and support to over one million clients in a single year. That included millions of diapers, baby formula and clothing items; hundreds of thousands of free ultrasounds; STI testing; parenting classes; housing referrals; and ongoing case management.
Here in Indiana, over a dozen locations of the outstanding Women’s Care Center as well as many other PRCs serve women across the state.
These services are offered at no cost to women, regardless of their income, background or ultimate decision. They are not billed to Medicaid or private insurance. These organizations are not profit-making enterprises. They are a community response to women facing unexpected or difficult pregnancies. And they exist precisely because many women want practical support in carrying a pregnancy to term. There is great demand for the support and resources that PRCs provide.
To dismiss these institutions that serve women in need as “propaganda sites” is not only inaccurate; it is demeaning to the women who seek them out.
It is also dangerous.
In the months following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, more than 100 pregnancy resource centers and pro-life organizations were attacked. In some cases, facilities were burned to the ground.
Words matter. When respected academics repeatedly characterize PRCs as fraudulent, coercive and harmful, it feeds a narrative that these organizations are illegitimate and even deserving of hostility. No one is responsible for the criminal actions of others, but people who wade into the public square bear responsibility for the climate they help create.
I have visited PRCs across our nation. I have seen firsthand the essential care they provide. I have met women whose lives have been transformed by the services and support they received at PRCs. In addition to providing practical, tangible support, PRCs offer a vital but less visible service: restoring women’s dignity and confidence by treating them with respect and affirming their capacity to be mothers.
PRCs are not the caricature Ostermann describes. They are an expression of civil society at its best and, more than any other type of organization, they prepare pregnant women to make a free and unfettered choice. Not every woman who walks into a PRC ultimately chooses to carry her pregnancy to term, but every single one is treated with dignity and respect.
We cannot let the resolution of Ostermann’s leadership appointment at Notre Dame be the final word in the underlying debate in which she has repeatedly engaged, as she is unfortunately just one of many who make incorrect and baseless claims against PRCs. The ideologically driven witch hunts continue as a New Jersey pregnancy center at the center of a current U.S. Supreme Court case faces threats to its First Amendment rights, and just days ago a federal judge sided with state officials in Massachusetts who are running smear campaigns against a PRC there.
None of this is merited, none of it is fact-based and all of it damages the common good by making it more difficult for women who want and need pregnancy support to find it. PRCs, and the countless women who have been helped by them, deserve better than these baseless smears.
LifeNews Note: Jennie Bradley Lichter is president of March for Life, a former deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council in the first Trump administration and a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. This article originally appeared at the Indy Star.
