Pro-Life Women’s Group Confident White House Pregnancy Funds Airtight
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 12, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — While other pro-life groups are concerned about the new White House Pregnancy Fund, Feminists for Life of America contacted LifeNews.com today to say it believes the creation of the fund is good news and it is confident the money will end up in the right hands.
The Obama administration quietly announced the $25 million fund about two weeks ago, and it is a section of the controversial national health care bill President Barack Obama signed that also contains massive abortion funding.
While help for pregnant and parenting mothers is something that has been a hallmark of the pro-life movement for decades, some groups say they’re concerned on two levels.
The organizations — including Focus on the Family, FRC, Care Net and Heartbeat — say they’re concerned Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion groups will wind up receiving some of the money. They also note the total funding is a "drop in the bucket" compared with the hundreds of millions in government monies pro-abortion groups and the abortion business receive.
But Feminists for Life of America is applauding the new grants, saying they are the "first federal grants of their kind" and they were "inspired by Feminists for Life’s work on college campuses to develop resources for this underserved population."
"This is what we have been working towards. Pregnancy and parenting should never terminate an education," FFLA president Serrin Foster told LifeNews.com today.
"No woman, no parent, should be forced to choose between her education and career or her child, a child that needs the very support education can help to provide. Pregnant and parenting students deserve better. That includes birthmothers–and student dads like mine. They deserve equal access to opportunities in higher education," she said.
"And society deserves to benefit from the unique contributions that their education will allow them to make," Foster added.
Foster said FFLA urges state governments to apply for the grants — which range from $500,000 to $2 million dollars for up to three years — and that her organization is offering assistance to state offices as they prepare their applications.
"As the creator of the program, FFL will subsequently offer direct assistance to universities and colleges who are awarded the matching funds to implement the program," she said.
Foster says the grants come seventeen years after FFL’s College Outreach Program placed a focus on pregnant and parenting students on college and university campuses.
FFL first began helping universities assess the unmet needs of pregnant and parenting students when Foster moderated its first Pregnancy Resource Forum in 1997 at Georgetown University.
Georgetown committed to annual Forums and, within a few years, established parenting-friendly policies, a central place on campus to go for help (health services), support for birthmothers, improved communications, and vital resources like childcare and family housing adjacent to campus. Ever since, FFL has moderated similar Forums at top schools across the country.
That led to the groups’ Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act — a model to provide grants to colleges and universities across the United States for annual pregnancy and parenting resource forums.
States will have until August 2 to compete for the first wave of grants to focus on the college initiative, help for pregnant and parenting teens, and help for pregnant victims of violence. The total budget is $25 million for each year from 2010 until 2019.
Related web sites:
Feminists for Life of America – https://www.feministsforlife.org
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