FUNDING NORPLANT PROGRAM SEEN AS RACIST

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 12, 1993                   TAG: 9302120289
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium
FUNDING NORPLANT PROGRAM SEEN AS RACIST
Using state money to help indigent women get the Norplant birth control device amounts to "racism" and "ethnic cleansing," opponents of the plan charged Thursday.
At a Capitol news conference, Sen. Mark Earley, R-Chesapeake, said the health clinics would aggressively market the device to minority teen-agers.
He was joined at the news conference by Anne Kincaid, a lobbyist for the Family Foundation; Linda Byrd-Harden, state director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Kathleen Kenney, representing the Catholic Diocese of Richmond; Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas; and Sen. Charles Colgan, D-Manassas.
Norplant is a birth control device that is surgically implanted in a woman's arm. It is effective for five years. State clinics help indigent women pay for the $350 process if they want it, but the $600,000 assistance program had fallen victim to cutbacks in the budget proposed by Gov. Douglas Wilder.
In passing its budget plan Thursday, the House of Delegates voted to restore half that amount; the state Senate voted for full funding.
Before the votes, the Norplant opponents staged a hasty news conference where the harshest words came from Kincaid, whose Family Foundation crusades against abortion.
The Norplant program, advocated by a state anti-poverty commission, "is a technocrat equivalent of ethnic cleansing, a harbinger of genetic engineering, [and] it smacks of the mentality of `massive resistance.' Is this the '60s revisited?" Kincaid said.
Targeting indigent teens for long-term birth control is worthy of an animal shelter, she said: "Fixing them so they won't reproduce."
Earley worried "Although we may be shielding these teen-agers from pregnancy, we are setting them up for the devastating effects of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS."
He noted that Louisiana politician and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke advocated providing Norplant to indigent women, who statistics say tend to be black.
The program "is not only racist but sexist as well," said the NAACP's Byrd-Harden. "Why aren't we looking at promoting more responsible sexual behavior on the part of males? Why is it always women?"
Byrd-Harden suggested the money would be better spent on AIDS education or infant health care. Kenney, speaking for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, said giving teen-agers blanket birth control would "encourage the continued fragmentation of family life."
But when the program came up for a vote with the rest of the budget, legislative leaders pooh-poohed the dramatic claims.
"Sexually transmitted diseases . . . are there whether Norplant is around or not," said Sen. Clarence Holland, D-Virginia Beach, who is a physician.
Almost 9,000 women requested the implants last year, causing waiting lists at 15 health departments around the state, said Senate Majority Leader Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton.
Getting Norplant "is voluntary," Andrews said. "There is no force behind it. They are counseled in this matter."
The program passed both House and Senate easily, but a conference committee will have to decide how much money it should get.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1993

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB