Georgia House passes bill giving $2 million to pro-life pregnancy resource centres

Republican state Sen. Renee Unterman is the sponsor of the bill that establishes the Positive Alternatives for Pregnancy and Parenting Grant Program to promote healthy pregnancies and childbirth. (Georgia Legislature)

Georgia's House of Representatives has passed a bill giving as much as $2 million to pregnancy resource centres to encourage them not to have an abortion.

The House voted 105-52 to pass the bill that would provide alternatives to abortion services to medically indigent women at no cost.

These women will be provided with pregnancy support services that "encourage childbirth instead of voluntary termination of pregnancy and which assist pregnant women or women who believe they may be pregnant to choose childbirth whether they intend to parent or select adoption for the child."

Georgia's Senate approved the measure last month with a 38-16 vote.

It will fund organisations that do not perform, refer or promote abortions to women unless a physician advises that the pregnancy would threaten a mother's life.

The bill establishes the Positive Alternatives for Pregnancy and Parenting Grant Program to promote healthy pregnancies and childbirth.

Republican state Sen. Renee Unterman, the bill's sponsor, said the undercover videos on Planned Parenthood inspired her to provide funding to pregnancy resource centres, LifeSite News reported.

State Rep. Sharon Cooper said, "When our party has been a party pushing for decreased access to abortion facilities and has so stressed the need not to have abortion, I think we have a moral responsibility to say: 'If you make the choice, if you choose life and you need help, we'll be there to help you,'" the Associated Press reported.

"This $2 million, I can guarantee you, is going to be spent well," because it's "going to have transparency," Unterman said last February.

She said funding a pro-life programme would allow lawmakers "to talk about something not so heinous and terrible, but talk about something that is very, very good."

The budge would benefit about 70 pro-life women's centres.

There were about 27,500 abortions performed in Georgia in 2013, according to AP.

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