Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 8, 1995 TAG: 9506080063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Title X program was set up 25 years ago to assure that poor women had access to family planning counseling and related medical services, such as pelvic exams. More than $150,000 in Title X funds come to the Alleghany and Roanoke health districts annually to support family-planning programs.
Title X funds, which this year total $193.5 million nationally, pay for birth control products but do not pay for abortions.
Nor does any Title X money come to any Planned Parenthood affiliate in Virginia, said Blue Ridge President Kathryn Haynie.
Haynie said her group is joining similar groups throughout the country in circulating petitions, initiating letter-writing campaigns and carrying out other lobbying efforts in favor of Title X, because her agency is committed to helping women prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Haynie said her group has a further obligation to fight for the Title X funds because it is thought that some of the opposition to the program is a backlash against Planned Parenthood's position that women have a right to abortion.
Since 15 percent of the Planned Parenthood organizations in the country do receive Title X funds, Haynie said she fears some religious groups are lobbying for discontinuance of the funds just to block the money going to those few centers.
Title X of the Public Health Service Act was signed by President Nixon in 1970 and has been reauthorized six times with bipartisan support. However, the reauthorization legislation expired in 1985, and, since then, the program has continued through annual appropriations, which have been cut periodically.
In 1988, regulatory changes prohibited clinics that got Title X funds from providing counseling and referral for abortion services, even if patients asked for them. Planned Parenthood nationally and in several states got an injunction against the regulatory changes. President Clinton reversed the gag rule by executive order in January 1993.
Since 1981, Title X funding has shrunk 66 percent in constant 1980 dollars, Haynie said.
Wednesday's announcement was timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of a U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing contraceptives for married couples. The decision in Griswold vs. Connecticut made it illegal for states to prohibit married couples from using contraceptives or to keep doctors from advising married couples about contraception.
Twenty-nine states had laws against contraceptives at the time of the Griswold case, which involved a Planned Parenthood director who sought to knock down the state laws.
It was another five years or so before it was legal for unmarried couples to receive counseling on contraceptives.
Dr. Molly Rutledge, director of the Roanoke and Alleghany health districts, said loss of Title X funds wouldn't "crush" her family-planning programs, "but it would cripple me."
"In our state, [the money] is going for the right thing," Rutledge said.
About 60 percent of the women who receive contraceptive and other family-planning health services in the Alleghany Health District get them through Title X, she said. The percentage is lower in the Roanoke Health District, but it still is substantial, she said.
Most of the women served have incomes of $16,000 or less for a family of four, Rutledge said. At that income level, the cost of birth control can be prohibitive, she and Haynie said.
Title X money pays for low-income women to get a physical exam; a Pap smear; education about conception; and contraceptive methods such as the Norplant implant, Depo-Provera shots, birth control pills, condoms, foam and diaphragms.
It also pays for counseling about abstinence as a form of birth control, she said.
by CNB