By Bob Allen
The Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation withdrew a $42,000 grant from a women’s health clinic after learning that it dispenses morning-after birth control pills.
According to the Rome News-Tribune, the grant was for cervical cancer screening at Women of W.O.R.T.H, the only non-profit women’s health-care clinic in Rome, Ga. Clinic officials said it would also increase hours to provide gynecological care for women who cannot afford it.
W.O.R.T.H. stands for Women’s Organization for Reproductive and Total Health-care. Marilyn Ringstaff, executive director, told the Rome News-Tribune that during the application process last year a representative of the ministry called to ask if the facility is an abortion clinic and a volunteer answered, “No.”
After reading about the grant in a newspaper story that appeared April 9, Ringstaff said an unidentified pastor called the clinic and accused them of providing abortions. Will Bacon, vice president for development for Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation, sent Ringstaff a letter dated April 10 asking that the grant money be returned.
Ringstaff said the “morning after pill” is not an abortion pill, but rather a contraceptive that can be given to a woman after sex to diminish her chances of getting pregnant. She said it is available over the counter without a prescription and has a 10 percent rate of failure.
“It’s not RU-486, but they still believe it is,” Ringstaff said, referring to the controversial abortion pill that will disrupt an already established pregnancy.
The use of contraceptives that take effect after the egg is fertilized but before it attaches to the uterine wall has become a hot topic since President Obama’s recent mandate that insurance companies offer birth control to women free of charge. Catholic leaders protested because their church views all forms of artificial birth control a sin. Conservative evangelicals, including some Southern Baptist leaders, believe life begins at the moment of conception and say forcing them to subsidize insurance that provides pills they view as causing an abortion violates their religious freedom.
An attorney for the Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation, a 100-year-old organization that provides financial support to health-care ministries of the Georgia Baptist Convention, told the Rome newspaper that it does not comment on who does or does not receive grants.
Ringstaff said she was disappointed. Last year the clinic saw more than 600 patients, and with the grant hoped to double its volume in 2012.