When President Obama said that he did not want his daughters punished with a pregnancy– he wasn’t kidding.
Perhaps that was the motivation behind his creation of the The Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) a government agency and division of the Health and Human Services Department.
According to Siecus, the OAH is part of President Obama’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI), first funded in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 at $110 million, in public and private grants. The Initiative funds programs that “reduce teen pregnancy”.
TPPI is administered by the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH), in cooperation with the Administration for Children and Families and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2012, OAH or TPPI was funded at $105 million.
Planned Parenthood’s research arm, the Guttmacher Institute describes OAH this way, “The program emerged during final negotiations over the health care reform legislation enacted in March 2010. As partisans argued over provisions to prohibit insurance coverage of abortion when government funds are involved,Sen.BobCasey(D-PA)and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pressed for the fund’s inclusion as part of the final legislation, characterizing it as a way to make it easier for vulnerable women to decide to carry their pregnancies to term.”
Guttmacher’s continues, they write, “Melinda Delahoyde, president of Care Net, a network of crisis pregnancy centers, in an article published by the Christian News Service. “Our hope is that the White House will be true to its word and use this money to reduce abortion by giving it to those organizations that truly help women choose life.”The Family Research Council’s criticism of the program was more direct: “How can [President Obama] find common ground on abortion if the Fund never mentions it?” Other activists, particularly in the antiabortion blogosphere, opposed the creation of the fund as a “social spending” program. Financial rewards, they say, incentivize the nation’s teens to have children.”
On the OAH website they claim to, “support and evaluate evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) programs and implement the Pregnancy Assistance Fund.”
In addition the OAH coordinates HHS efforts related to adolescent health promotion and disease prevention; and communicates adolescent health information to health professionals and groups, those who serve youth, parents, grantees, and the general public. OAH is the convener and catalyst for the development of a national adolescent health agenda.
What is interesting are the goals that the Center for Disease Protection (CDC) lays out for OAH:
According to the CDC, “The purpose of this program is to demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative, multicomponent, communitywide initiatives in reducing rates of teen pregnancy and births in communities with the highest rates, with a focus on reaching African American and Latino/Hispanic youth aged 15–19.“
To achieve these goals for FY 2011–2015, nine state- and community-based organizations, including two Title X agencies, and five national organizations were funded through the cooperative agreement, Teenage Pregnancy Prevention: Integrating Services, Programs, and Strategies Through Communitywide Initiatives. These awards were made through two competitive funding opportunity announcements (FOA): one through a joint FOA from OAH and CDC, and one from a joint Office of Population Affairs and CDC FOA.
OAH seeks grantees to work in areas of high teenaged pregnancy and recently solicited applications to give away $890,000 in grant monies.
In addition, grantees of the OAH include….abortion giant Planned Parenthood, something the national office bragged about in 2010.
Like this pro-life news article? Please support LifeNews with a donation during our April fundraising campaign!
In 2010 – Planned Parenthood claims the following affiliates received funding from HHS:
The Planned Parenthood affiliates who have been awarded teen pregnancy prevention grants are:
Planned Parenthood of New York City
Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, partners with:
Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and Northern Idaho
Planned Parenthood of the Columbia/Willamette
Planned Parenthood of Montana
Planned Parenthood of Southwest Oregon
Mt. Baker Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region, subcontractor with Youth and Family Alliance dba Lifeworks
Planned Parenthood of Hawaii, subcontractor with Hawaii Youth Services Network and subcontractor with University of Hawaii
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, subcontractor with University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, subcontractor with The Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy
Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast, subcontractor with the University of Texas Health Science Center
Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, subcontractor with the City of Hartford
Planned Parenthood of Illinois, subcontractor with Chicago Public Schools, District #299
Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando, Inc received $477,790 annually to implement Sisters Informing, Healing, Living and Empowering (SiHLE) and Safer Sex Intervention targeting teens 14-19 years old,
That $477,790 annually amounts to $2,388,950 in grant funding for its “Teens Rise!” project.
Planned Parenthood of NYC (PPNYC) receives Annual Funding of $611,823
Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest in partnership with five Planned Parenthood affiliates collaborate to administer the Teen Outreach Program (TOP)® program in 73 sites across five states receives annual funding of $4,000,000, targeting children in grades 7-12 (ages 12-17 years old).
Despite the above claim that PPGNW received $4,000,000 by the OAH, PPGNW claims it originally received $20 MILLION from the government organization in 2010 when the office was created.
Evelyn M. Kappeler is the Director of the HHS Office of Adolescent Health, a position she has held since July 29, 2012. Ms. Kappeler was first appointed in 2010 by the Assistant Secretary for Health to build and to lead, in an acting capacity, the newly funded Office of Adolescent Health (OAH). Kappeler previously served as the Acting Director of the HHS Office of Population Affairs (OPA) where she managed the office and oversaw an expansion of the Title X National Family Planning Program.
In 2004, Kappeler contributed to a Guttmacher fund (read here)
____________________________
Nicole “Cole” Bennett is Fellow at the Office of Adolescent Health at US Department of Health and Human Services , just so happens that she was a Program Coordinator for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles from September 2007 – August 2010, according to her LinkedIn page.
A 2009 post on “Cole’s” Tumblr page shows a letter by Cecile Richards after the death of late term abortionist George Tiller:
Although, it seems obvious that this initiative to assist women in pregnancy or prevent teenaged pregnancies is aligning with abortion promoters, we will surely discover more connections as this new government agency continues.
So, I will end with this tid-bit: A 2011 OAH Training Initiative included former Planned Parenthood and Siecus members. Hmmmm.
LifeNews Note: Carole Novielli is the author of the blog Saynsumthn, where this article originally appeared.
