Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s budget was met with mixed views from the Michigan Catholic Conference.

“From the perspective of the state budget as a moral statement, the budget that was signed today and the omnibus education budget that was signed last week, is good in many regards and disappointing in others,” Tom Hickson, MCC’s vice president for advocacy and public policy, said in a release Wednesday. 

Whitmer signed Michigan's Fiscal Year 2023 budget on Wednesday. The MCC applauded Whitmer for certain items she approved, but Hickson also detailed some shortcomings with the budget plans.

“We are grateful that this budget contains important funding to help protect children in all of Michigan’s schools and provides important resources for the less fortunate. We are also pleased to see funding to research the root causes of violence in schools, especially gun violence,” he said about the budget and the education plan. 

“Both budgets, however, contained critical funding to provide expectant mothers with assistance in raising their babies. Sadly, these programs were vetoed by the Governor as ‘anti-choice.’ This decision will harm women who choose to start a family. Michigan women deserve better.” 

Whitmer vetoed millions of dollars worth of items aimed at supporting crisis pregnancies, including grants to support pregnant women who don't have safe homes, tax credits for parents who adopt and grants to support pregnancy resource centers.

MCC policy advocate Rebecca Mastee, a lawyer, elaborated on what that will mean.

“Although terribly unfortunate, it was not unexpected that the governor would, again, take the extreme position of vetoing funding to help pregnant women in crisis,” Mastee said in the release. 

“Vetoing this funding alienates tens of thousands of women and families who receive assistance from non-profit pregnancy resource centers each year. By eliminating these helping hands for women who want to have their babies, the governor is, in effect, taking away their ‘choice’ — the choice for childbirth. These vetoes — along with some $16 million vetoed from the previous fiscal year budget that sought to help women in need — clarify that pro-abortion advocates have fully committed to push abortion extremism on our state.”

The MCC attributes those vetoes to Whitmer’s stance on abortion. The governor made it clear she wants it remain an option in Michigan after the Supreme Court handed that decision to state legislatures.

"Thanks to the work we’ve done together, abortion remains legal in Michigan,” she tweeted recently. “We’re fighting every damn day to keep it that way.”