You Can’t Say You’re Pro-Life and Defund Job Corps

America is in the throes of a moral contradiction. On one hand, lawmakers across the country are advancing anti-abortion bills under the banner of “pro-life” values. On the other hand, many of these same leaders are eliminating programs that give Black and Brown youth a shot at life after birth, programs like Job Corps. This contradiction lays bare the truth: the fight over reproductive rights were never about protecting life; it was about controlling it.

Dr. Antonio EllisThe Job Corps program, a federally funded vocational training and education initiative established in 1964, has been a lifeline for low-income youth ages 16 to 24. With over 120 centers nationwide, Job Corps serves approximately 25,000 students annually, 67% of whom are Black and Brown. It provides career training, housing, and high school diploma or GED support, critical services for communities historically marginalized by systemic inequities in education and employment.

Yet in 2025, the Department of Labor, under pressure from conservative lawmakers and framed as a budget-cutting measure, announced the closure of all contractor-operated Job Corps sites by June 30, 2025. In places like New Haven, CT, this meant 149 students were suddenly displaced, forced to find alternatives that simply do not exist in their neighborhoods. Across the country, thousands of students, predominantly youth of color, were abruptly cut off from education, housing, and job opportunities. The excuse? A 38.6% graduation rate and high costs. But these numbers ignore the structural challenges these youth face, poverty, community violence, underfunded schools, and a lack of access to healthcare and transportation.

Bishop William Darin Moore At the same time, reproductive rights are being stripped away in state after state. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, over a dozen states have passed near-total abortion bans. These restrictions have disproportionately impacted Black and Brown communities, where access to healthcare is already limited. In 2021, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for non-Hispanic White women. In Texas, for example, the maternal mortality rate rose by 56% from 2019 to 2022, compared with just an 11% rise nationwide during the same time period.

The convergence of these two policies, forcing birth while defunding programs that support life after birth, reveals a harrowing reality. These policies do not protect life; they abandon it. They compel young women to carry pregnancies to term under the weight of poverty, then gut the very programs that could help their children thrive. They ignore the structural violence that Black and Brown youth face while claiming the moral high ground.

You cannot say you're pro-life and defund Job Corps. You cannot force someone to give birth and then strip away the services that would allow that child to succeed. If life is sacred, then it must be supported at every stage, not just at conception.

What our communities need is investment, not abandonment. If policymakers were truly interested in protecting life, they would be expanding Job Corps, not dismantling it. They would ensure access to healthcare, quality education, affordable housing, and reproductive autonomy. Instead, they are legislating poverty and powerlessness.

This is not just policy failure, it is moral hypocrisy. And it’s costing Black and Brown youth their futures.

Until we demand policies that respect the fullness of life, before and after birth, we will continue to see these contradictions play out in the lives of our most vulnerable. True justice is not forcing birth; it is building systems where life can flourish. That includes keeping programs like Job Corps alive.

Dr. Antonio L. Ellis is a senior professorial lecturer at the American University School of Education. He is a noted disability studies scholar and special education practitioner.

Bishop William Darin Moore is the Presiding Prelate for the Mid-Atlantic Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.