This Government-Sponsored Organization was Helping Women Get Abortions

In a report published Tuesday, the Council for National and Community Service Office of Inspector General revealed in detail how several AmeriCorps members were allowed to provide “doula care” to women during abortions.

The IG report states that between 2013 and 2015, the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) in Bethesda, Maryland, allowed “a few” AmeriCorps workers to provide emotional support to women at three New York City abortion clinics operated by the Institute for Family Health. The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, the federal statute authorizing the AmeriCorps program, expressly prohibits the use of AmeriCorps resources to provide abortion services.

NACHC is one of AmeriCorps’ largest grantees, receiving $30 million over the last five years. The organization also receives support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which was also made aware of the investigation.

According to the report:

Investigators discovered that NACHC had disregarded the direction of CNCS’s General Counsel in 2010 to include in its training materials and member agreements the abortion prohibition precisely as stated in the Serve America Act. Instead, NACHC adopted a narrower restriction: “Providing or promoting abortions; Providing a direct referral for an abortion. A referral consists of a name, address, telephone number, and other relevant factual information, such as what insurance is accepted.” The grantee continued to deviate from the prescribed language even after a 2011 Congressional hearing following CNCS’s disclosure that two other grantees had committed abortion‐related prohibited activities. CNCS thereafter communicated repeatedly with all grantees about the need for scrupulous compliance with the prohibitions laid out by Congress.

Nevertheless, in 2013, only two years after those much publicized events, NACHC’s former National Director chose to authorize AmeriCorps members at IFH to provide doula care during abortions, without informing CNCS or inquiring whether those services were permissible. IFH relied on that authorization.

The IG report also states that there was a failure to follow up on or report allegations that AmeriCorps members at IFH were tasked to perform work ordinarily performed by employees, a further violation of regulations. Additionally, multiple staff members told investigators they had reported various instances of waste, fraud and abuse to NACHC’s senior management, which also was not reported to CNCS.

“The investigative findings reflect a lack of institutional control, oversight and good faith dealing in NACHC’s administration of this substantial grant,” the report states, later adding, “Upon learning from NACHC’s current National Director of members’ participation in abortion services, CNCS immediately requested that CNCS‐OIG investigate. Pending completion of the investigation, the Corporation immediately took interim steps to protect the integrity of the AmeriCorps program.”

Those steps included:

• “CNCS suspended advance drawdowns on the grants, instead allowing only reimbursement of incurred expenses;
• “CEO Wendy Spencer contacted NACHC’s AmeriCorps National Director to emphasize the seriousness of the allegations and the importance of prompt and full cooperation with the CNCS‐OIG investigation; and
• “CNCS required NACHC to disallow the hours devoted to the prohibited activities, suspend the members involved, issue new guidance and conduct new training for members and site supervisors regarding prohibited activities, and revise and reissue every member’s service contract to include more precise language concerning the scope of the abortion prohibition.”

Additionally, following completion of the investigation, CNCS took the following action:

• “Forbidding NACHC to enroll new members on its current grant;
• “Requiring NACHC to engage, at its own expense, an independent oversight monitor with plenary access to information and broad authority to determine and report periodically to CNCS whether any prohibited activities have occurred, a measure unprecedented at CNCS;
• “Requiring NACHC to designate an Ombudsperson to develop a policy on transparency, investigation of misconduct allegations and reporting and serve as an channel for reporting such allegations and ensuring that they are addressed; and
• “Requiring NACHC to task an experienced AmeriCorps administrator to increase substantially NACHC’s monitoring of its AmeriCorps grants and communications with subgrantees and members.”

Following the release of an advance summary of the report, CNCS issued the following statement through its spokeswoman, Samantha Jo Warfield:

We are deeply disappointed that the National Association of Community Health Centers authorized national service participants to perform prohibited activities. Although the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation concluded the misconduct occurred on an extremely limited scope, the grantee broke the law and violated the spirit of national service.

More than 950,000 Americans have served in AmeriCorps over the last 21 years. They are a testament to how national service brings us together and provides individuals of all backgrounds more opportunities to connect with one another and give back to their communities and their country. CNCS awards competitive grants to faith-based groups and community nonprofits to run programs where national service members address our nation’s toughest problems like the high-school dropout rate, substance abuse and veterans’ homelessness. In addition, AmeriCorps members have responded to nearly 200 disasters in just the last five years.

The laws governing national service participants’ activities are important to ensure the mission and spirit of national service is fulfilled. That is why Congress prohibited certain activities such as voter registration, protests or labor union organizing, abortion services and religious proselytizing. CNCS is overwhelmingly clear with its grantees about what activities are prohibited, and we hold our grantees accountable for ensuring that members do not engage in these activities while they are serving.

CNCS worked closely with the OIG to ensure the prohibited activities stopped immediately and were fully investigated. The OIG investigation determined that the prohibited activity was limited in scope, involving only one of the 34 community health networks and only six of the nearly 1,600 members who served with NACHC during its current grant cycle.

In response to the OIG investigation, CNCS imposed tough and detailed reforms to protect the integrity of the national service program and to hold the grantee fully accountable. At CNCS’s direction, NACHC will engage a person to serve as its independent oversight monitor—at NACHC’s own expense—to oversee the grantee’s compliance. Among other measures, CNCS also suspended NACHC’s ability to enroll any new national service members under its grant.

Moving forward, we will continue to build on the public’s strong support for AmeriCorps members who are transforming lives in rural areas, tribal communities and large cities in 15,000 locations across the country, and unifying citizens behind a common purpose that reflects our country’s highest ideals.

NACHC issued its own statement, as well, which said, in part:

We take this matter seriously and have fully cooperated with both CNCS and the OIG throughout their process. We moved immediately to cease the activity in question and suspended the identified site’s AmeriCorps members for a period until they and their site supervisors were retrained and revised member service contracts were reviewed and signed.

All 38 sub-grantee program coordinators and HealthCorps grant staff at NACHC were also retrained. Retraining included reviewing all relevant rules and regulations related to AmeriCorps prohibited activities. To prevent future misinterpretations, the nearly 500 AmeriCorps member service contracts were revised to include statutory language, as well as CNCS’s clarifications regarding prohibited activities.  

All actively serving members, program coordinators and site supervisors were required to review and sign the revised member service contract. In addition, the sub-grantee in question [Institute for Family Health] was removed from NACHC’s refunding application for any subsequent cycle.