THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 10, 1995 TAG: 9502090011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
Has Henry Foster done something to disqualify him as surgeon general, the post for which President Clinton has nominated him? Nothing we've heard so far - so far, because the White House has once again displayed its inability to learn all it should and tell all it knows about its nominees.
Dr. Foster, a gynecologist and obstetrician, has delivered 10,000 babies. He has performed fewer than a dozen abortions, but certainly more than the one abortion the White House initially said. He has overseen a study of an abortion-inducing drug. The subjects of abortion and Dr. Foster's record on it were bound to surface. Better that the White House had been forthcoming from the start.
And better now that it stop trying to soft-pedal his record. Dr. Foster performed abortions in a hospital, not in an abortion clinic, and very few were elective. But most abortions are elective, most occur in clinics, and research on drugs to safely induce abortion is essential to preserving access to it. These are not reasons to outlaw abortion, or to deny women access to abortion practitioners or practitioners instruction in medical school. Dr. Foster need not apologize for making these points, both from philosophy and experience. And the nation should not flinch from them.
Henry Foster also has demonstrated the philosophy and experience to curb abortion the only possible way: by diminishing the need for it. He has begun programs in two housing projects in Nashville. By emphasizing abstinence and distributing condoms to teenagers who reject abstinence, these programs have helped reduce the number of sexually active teens and illegitimate births.
If talking abstinence and condoms seems contradictory, it is not: Pregnancy rates are rising fastest among teenage mothers - the least likely to be married, to marry, to finish school, to support themselves; and their children are the most likely to do like-wise. Some of these teens respond to exhortations to abstinence, others to the availability of birth control. Either way, the goals are practical, so more achievable: Try to prevent premature sex. Failing that, prevent irresponsible sex, and the babies, physical ills and social ills that result.
If increasing illegitimacy and its attendant problems aren't suitable subjects for the surgeon general, what are? And if experience is a disqualification for surgeon general, why have one?
The post of surgeon general is largely a bully pulpit for increasing public awareness of public health. Unwed parenthood is a public problem, a health problem - and a social, financial, criminal and educational problem.
Unfortunately, Joycelyn Elders, whom Dr. Foster has been nominated to succeed, was all bully, no pulpit: Fair or not, her way seemed the only way, especially regarding teen sexuality; and her way was to treat teen sex as the business of teens and governments. She gave short shrift to differing needs and approaches because she shorted distinctions among teens, among parents, among localities. Just a hint of those distinctions, drawn from ``Sex and America's Teenagers,'' a 1994 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, appear in the box below.
Because illegitimacy is a sensitive subject, it rarely gets the candor it requires. It is a complex problem that debating chastity vs. condoms won't solve. Dr. Foster may or may not prove to be the top choice for the job of surgeon general. But reducing illegitimacy is a job, if a difficult job, for all Americans; and somebody with as much sense as sensitivity has got to lead it. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
FROM A GUTTMACHER STUDY, `SEX AND AMERICA'S TEENAGERS'
Although sex is common among teenagers, it is not as widespread,
and does not begin as early, as most adults believe. . . . Few very
young adolescents are sexually experienced. . . . More than half of
teenagers are virgins until they are at least 17.
. . . Sex is more common among adolescent men than women, and
more likely among black teenagers than among white or Hispanic
youth. . . . Poor and low-income teeangers are more likely than
adolescents from higher-income families to be sexually experienced,
although the difference is not as great as those among racial and
ethnic groups.
. . . Most young people begin to have sex in their middle or late
teens, many years before they are married. The increase in
non-marital intercourse has been most dramatic among young white
women. Although sex is more common among teenagers and generally
begins at earlier ages than was the case several decades ago,
sexually experienced adolescents tend to have intercourse less
frequently than older unmarried men and women. This tendency to have
sex sporadically can affect teenagers' efforts to prevent STDs and
unintended pregnancy by making them unprepared to use contraceptives
when they do have intercourse or unwilling to use effective methods
that provide protection over a long period of time, such as the
pill.
. . . Pregnancy rates among sexually experienced teenagers have
declined substantially over the last two decades, but because the
proportion of teenagers who are sexually experienced had grown, the
overall teenage pregnancy rate has increased. One million young
women become pregnant annually, the vast majority unintentionally.
Older teenagers and adolescents who are poor or black are more
likely to get pregnant than are their young-er, more advantaged and
white counterparts.
. . . White adolescents and those from more advantaged
backgrounds generally elect to terminate their pregnancies.
Child-bearing, meanwhile, is concentrated among teenagers who are
poor or black. Young mothers . . . also are at risk of falling
further behind their more advantaged peers who have chosen to
postpone childbearing.
by CNB