By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
Despite fierce opposition, the Lonoke County Quorum Court passed a resolution of support Thursday night that will allow a relatively new Cabot nonprofit organization working to prevent teen pregnancies to apply for a state grant to buy a van.
Three justices voted against it.
JP Janette Minton was the most vocal of the three who voted against the resolution that will allow Crossroad House to apply for a $25,000 state grant.
Alexis Malham and Mark Edwards also voted “no.”
Minton told mother and daughter Ophelia Mosley and Desiree Kelly that since their outreach and housing program includes advice against unprotected sex, she couldn’t support their resolution.
Abstinence is the only message that she could support because it is the only sure way to prevent pregnancy and disease, Minton said.
“I know your heart is right and you’re good people, but your message is wrong,” Minton said.
Mosley responded that abstinence is a component of the state-approved program that her daughter takes into schools across the county. But birth con trol is also taught if the schools allow it.
Mosley, a veteran social worker, said anyone who had ever seen a pregnant 9-year-old would understand that teaching abstinence alone doesn’t work.
“It’s always abstinence is best – but,” Minton said.
Crossroad House got its nonprofit status in April and has a board that includes a Cabot police officer. It has room for six girls and their babies. Mosley said oftentimes young mothers in foster care can’t keep their babies because their foster parents won’t allow it.
The goal of Crossroad House is to keep young mothers together with their babies and work with them to prevent future pregnancies as well as helping them prepare to support themselves.
JP Alexis Malham told Mosley that she had checked with Cabot’s Academic Center of Excellence and no one there had heard of Crossroad House.
Pregnant girls in Cabot go to school at the center.
Mosley explained that she has only recently received notification that she will be getting her first girl.
She will contact the center about classes for the girls she takes in, but the preventative program is in the schools with younger girls, not high school age girls, she said.
“They never heard of you,” Malham said.
Mosley said in a later interview that she hadn’t contacted the center because it was too soon.
“There’s no use talking to them about girls I don’t have yet,” she said.
