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Obama Administration Gives $25 Million to Pregnancy Fund
The Health and Human Services Department will make $25 million available to states through competitive grants to encourage programs that serve pregnant women and teens.
The Pregnancy Assistance Fund will help women find health care and housing and provide support so that women can finish high school and college programs.
It’s an effort by the White House to find that elusive common ground between anti-choicers and pro-choicers. By providing women and teens who want to parent with the necessary support, the White House hopes to reduce overall the number of abortion procedures each year.
CNN reports that an email from HHS’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships announcing the new program said:
“It was only a year ago that President Obama gave a seminal speech at Notre Dame urging our nation to find common ground on the issue of abortion and unintended pregnancies.
The Pregnancy Assistance Fund is a competitive grant program established by the Affordable Care Act to assist women who have decided to carry their pregnancies to term and those who are parenting … This funding is another critical step in the President’s vision for common ground.”
Moderate anti-choicers and pro-choicers both seem to support the measure, which also aims to prevent violence against pregnant women, and hope that it is just a first step toward new programs to help new mothers and their children. But conservative pro-lifers say that the bill doesn’t go far enough. From CNN:
“This money is mandated for services for pregnant teens and women – violence prevention, vocational training,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman for CitizenLink, the public policy arm of the evangelical group Focus on the Family. “It would be inaccurate to characterize it as ‘abortion common ground’ since it doesn’t specifically address abortion.”
The new fund was born out of the March’s new and controversial health care bill. Tell us what you think about it in comments below.
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