If you thought Planned Parenthood was the only government-funded organization teaching kids about sex, think again. Kentucky’s pregnancy care centers are now obtaining federal grants to bolster an entirely different message -- abstinence.

On June 29, Sen. Jim Bunning visited Madisonville where he presented a $100,000 federal grant earmarked exclusively for abstinence education to the staff of the Door of Hope Pregnancy Care Center. Sen. Bunning, who secured the funds from the Department of Health and Human Services after he learned the center failed to obtain funding from an earlier grant application, applauded the staff for reaching out to “those who need the most help in the community.”

School age children have proved vulnerable to the “safe-sex” message taught in the public schools for several decades.  Skyrocketing teen pregnancy, the epidemic of sexually transmitted disease, and abortion have wrought havoc on young people who have bought into the message of values-free sex.

Pregnancy care centers have reached out to local schools with the abstinence message for years, and now they are reaching to the federal government for help. Bonnie Katz, grant writer for the Door of Hope, explained that the center has received more invitations than they can accommodate to give presentations in the public schools. 

Katz originally requested just under $1 million for a Community Based Abstinence Education Grant (CBAEG). The grant was approved but not funded, yet Katz wasn’t deterred.  “I think it’s really important to try,” Katz said. “I could have thrown up my hands and said, ‘there’s no way we’re going to get it.’  But there’s very little to lose. You don’t know until you try.” 

New Hope Pregnancy Care Center of Northern Kentucky applied for a CBAEG grant over two years ago and hit the jackpot: a $1 million abstinence education grant.  Several of the 36 pregnancy care centers located in Kentucky are expected to apply for the grants in the near future.