New Funding to Assist Teenage Parents

The creation of a federal Pregnancy Assistance Fund was announced Friday by the the Department of Health and Human Services.The department established the program to give competitive grants to states in order to assist pregnant women and teenage parents.

Women can receive assistance with child care, housing, high school and college degree completion, and health care. States may also use the money to develop plans to prevent violence against pregnant women. By providing pregnant women and young parents with these opportunities, the government hopes to brighten the future of both the children and the parents.

The program will provide $25 million in grants each year until 2019 to states. The process will be competitive, ensuring that the money only funds the best programs to cut down on waste, an issue important to many in this economy.

While the program does not specifically mention abortion, many consider this a common ground on the issue between the liberal Obama administration and conservative opponents. Kristen Day is the executive director of an antiabortion group, Democrats for Life of America. She states, "Pro-life and pro-choice people have gotten behind it so it's a good first step at reducing abortion and providing support for healthier babes and mothers. Once we show how effective this is we can go back and expand this program." She also believes this move has political benefits. "We've been working on common ground around abortion for a long time because we want to take it away as a wedge issue," she says.

While the program has bipartisan support, some conservative anti-abortion groups see little progress in the program. Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman for the Evangelical group Focus on the Family believes "It would be inaccurate to characterize [the program] as 'abortion common ground' since it doesn't specifically address abortion."