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(CNN) – The Health and Human Services Department announced Friday that it is making $25 million available to states to support pregnant women and teen parents, in an initiative that the White House is framing as a way to find common ground on abortion.
The new federal Pregnancy Assistance Fund will award grants to states aimed at providing pregnant women and teen parents support for completing high school or college degrees and for getting health care, child care and housing, HHS said in a news release Friday.
The grants can also be used to combat violence against pregnant women,the release said.
In an e-mail announcing the initiative to nonprofit groups on Friday, the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships at HHS tied the new fund to the abortion issue.
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(CNN) – Tea Party activists and other conservatives are planning rallies next month in support of Arizona's tough new immigration law, which has come under attack from Democrats, Latino groups and some maverick Republicans.
But a growing chorus of conservative evangelical leaders has broken with their traditional political allies on the right. They're calling the Arizona law misguided and are attempting to use its passage to push for federal immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
The group, which includes influential political activists such as Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy wing, and Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law, will soon begin lobbying Republican leaders in Washington to support comprehensive immigration reform under President Obama.
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Washington (CNN) - The U.S. Supreme Court may soon have no Protestant Christian justices for the first time in history.
If the Senate confirms Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the high court will contain six Catholic and three Jewish justices.
Retiring Justice John Paul Stevens is Protestant; Kagan is Jewish.
For most of American history, a Supreme Court with no Protestant Christian justices would have been unthinkable. Nearly three quarters of all justices who've ever served on the nation's high court have been Protestant. And roughly half of all Americans identify themselves as Protestant today.
But since Stevens announced his retirement, legal and religious scholars have begun entertaining the unprecedented prospect of a Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice.
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(CNN) – For most of American history, a Supreme Court with no Protestant Christian judges would have been unthinkable. Nearly three quarters of all justices who've ever served on the nation's high court have been Protestant.
And roughly half of all Americans identify themselves as Protestant today.
But since John Paul Stevens announced his retirement last month, legal and religious scholars have begun entertaining the unprecedented prospect of a Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice. Besides Stevens, who is Protestant, the current Supreme Court counts six Catholics and two Jews.
(CNN) - Inside the Washington beltway, Rep. Bart Stupak is taking heat from the left and right.
Three days after a major anti-abortion group took back its "Defender of Life" award from the Michigan Democrat over his support for the health care bill, the nation's leading abortion rights groups announced Wednesday that it is backing Stupak's primary election challenger because Stupak helped delay the legislation for months.
Abortion rights groups blame Stupak for holding up the health care bill, which President Obama signed Tuesday, over objections to its abortion provisions. Abortion foes said Stupak betrayed them by ultimately signing on to the bill.