Updated at 2:30 a.m. Aug. 13: Revised to include comments from speakers at the meeting.

More than a dozen supporters of The Turning Point rape crisis center in Plano stayed late into the night to speak out at Monday’s City Council meeting after a Plano councilman raised concerns earlier this month over city funding for the agency.

Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Anthony Ricciardelli said at an Aug. 1 work session that though he believed 99% of the work The Turning Point does is "tremendously important and excellent," he couldn't support funding for an organization that administers the Plan B pill, a form of emergency contraception.

In some circumstances, Ricciardelli said, “the Plan B pill destroys a human life.”

Plano city council member Anthony Ricciardelli listens to community members during a city council meeting in Plano, TX, on Aug. 12, 2019. (Jason Janik / Special Contributor)

“Plan B” is the brand name for an emergency contraceptive pill, a single dose of levonorgestrel that can be taken after unprotected intercourse to prevent pregnancy. It’s available over-the-counter and is sometimes called the morning-after pill.

The manufacturer says the pill works by delaying the release of an egg from an ovary, but it can also work by preventing fertilization of the egg or preventing the egg from implanting in the uterus. It does not affect an existing pregnancy, according to manufacturer documents on the federal Food and Drug Administration website.

Ricciardelli’s comments followed a discussion of recommendations for community services grants. In an email Monday, he said he supported using all of the proposed funding to help sexual assault victims, "even if not necessarily through this specific organization."

Council member Shelby Williams also spoke at the work session, saying he shared Ricciardelli's reservations on the issue.

Plano's Community Relations Commission recommended providing $57,542 in funding for The Turning Point in the coming budget cycle, up from $47,348 in 2018, according to city meeting materials.

Wendy Hanna, executive director of The Turning Point, says the Plan B pill is like "souped-up birth control." (2017 File Photo / Ben Torres)

Wendy Hanna, executive director of The Turning Point, said Ricciardelli raised similar concerns about funding The Turning Point last year.

“It’s counterintuitive to me that you can believe that work is essential for your community to thrive, and then you turn around and say, ‘But we’re not going to help with it,’ ” she said.

Hanna said she knows people have strong feelings about abortion.

“But this is not what this is,” she said. “I don’t know how many more ways to say that.”

The Plan B pill isn’t an abortifacient, Hanna said, likening it instead to a “souped-up birth control.”

In following national and state laws and protocol, sexual assault survivors at Courtney’s SAFE Place, The Turning Point’s forensics clinic, are informed that they have a right to STD medications and emergency contraception.

The Turning Point has given 33 doses of emergency contraceptive since the clinic opened in November, most of which have been donated, Hanna said.

It’s administered only at the survivor's request within 72 hours of an assault and only after a negative pregnancy test result, she said.

The $57,000 in proposed funding for The Turning Point from the Plano city budget would go directly toward counseling services for sexual assault survivors, Hanna said.

That’s a small part of the agency’s budget — only about 4%, Hanna said — but it funds one counselor position, plus part of a case manager role.

The Turning Point’s counseling wait list is more than 45 people long, so the funding is crucial, she said.

A person wearing a t-shirt saying "I am a sexual assault survivor" waits to speaks in support of The Turning Point rape crisis center, during the Plano City Council meeting on Monday, Aug. 12, 2019 in Plano, Texas. (Jason Janik / Special contributor)

Rachel Martin, 32, lives in Dallas, but she was a client at The Turning Point for two years beginning in 2015, she said.

She said she heard of Ricciardelli's concerns over funding The Turning Point over the weekend after reading a Local Profile article. She decided she had to be at Monday's council meeting to stick up for the agency, she said.

“I have to go. I have to protect their funding,” she said ahead of the meeting. “I texted all of my friends and said ‘We have to do something.’”

Martin helped organize a group of people to speak in support of The Turning Point at Monday's meeting.

More than a dozen people spoke to support The Turning Point as the meeting stretched past midnight.

Vanessa Baum, the education and outreach manager at The Turning Point, said the people who work with survivors of sexual assault like she does do it becasue it is “a calling.”

Baum, a 26-year-old Plano resident, urged the council not to take away “the equivalent of a counselor” in funding and rejected the idea that the same rape crisis counseling services could be offered by private counselors, as Ricciardelli suggested.

“That is not their life’s calling like it is ours,” she said. “We do this for a reason.”

Community members discuss the future of The Turning Point rape crisis center as they wait to speak in support of the center during a Plano city council meeting on Aug. 12, 2019. (Jason Janik / Special Contributor)

Kristin Mays, 29, of Denton, said she could barely leave her home before she started treatment at The Turning Point. Fear had taken over her life, she said.

“I felt I had nowhere to go,” she said. “I didn't have money for therapy, and I didn't even really know what I needed.”

Mays started therapy through The Turning Point and learned to process and move past her sexual trauma, she said.

“The moral position, in my opinion, is not to take funding away from The Turning Point, but I would think to double it.”

Cara Prentice of Plano introduced herself to the council as a former volunteer victim advocate at The Turning Point and a survivor of sexual assault.

“I held hands with survivors while they cried while they went through an exhausting, invasive, emotionally draining, sometimes painful sexual assault exam,” she said. “I provided them with resources for help.”

When Prentice was raped and left for dead in 1982, there was no crisis center for her, and no one held her hand while a nurse collected evidence after the attack, she said.

She urged the council not to think of funding The Turning Point as a pro-choice or pro-life issue.

“This is a who-we-are-as-a-city question,” Prentice said. “Do we support survivors of sexual assault, or do we not?”

Ricciardelli acknowledged the speakers at the end of the public hearing on the budget, saying the topic has weighed on him.

“I would imagine this is very unpopular ... but as I expressed on Aug. 1, I have a deep conviction of conscience of unborn life,” he said. “I care deeply about sexual assault survivors and I care deeply about unborn children.”

He said he would continue to think on and research the issue before Saturday, when when the council will have am 8 a.m. work session and discuss the funding issue further.

Hanna, of the Turning Point, will address the council then.