THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 26, 1995 TAG: 9507260014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee voted to eliminate funding earmarked for family planning for the poor. Ideology won out over common sense, and political back scratching over the common good.
The Republican majority voted to take $193 million dedicated to family planning and fold it into a block grant that would allow states to use the money for health programs of their own choosing.
Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., made no bones about the vote. It was a reward to conservative religious groups whose votes helped elect a Republican Congress last November. ``Today was payback time,'' Livingston candidly admitted.
The opposition to abortion by the religious right is well-known, but family-planning services and abortion are not synonymous. Funds allocated for family planning under the present law may not be used for abortion. Instead, they provide 4.3 million people a year at 4,200 clinics with pelvic exams, Pap smears, screening for sexually transmitted diseases and birth-control counseling.
If abortion is really what conservative groups oppose, they ought to favor family planning. In fact, a conscientiously followed family-planning regimen is probably the most realistic way to eliminate the demand for abortion that is such an unfortunate fact of life today.
Since unwanted children born into poverty run grave risks of being maltreated, malnourished, maleducated and regarded not as a blessing but as a burden, making family-planning services available to the poor ought to be a top priority for a humane society. Self-interest also argues for such programs. Unwanted children too often grow up to be dangerous adults.
For all these reasons, the funding of family-planning services for the poor makes sense. Eliminating funding doesn't. Of course, if what the religious right really opposes is not abortion but sex, then opposition to family planning becomes more understandable.
There is no getting around the fact that family planning is based on the assumption that humans will engage in sex. And despite centuries of preachments against sex at an early age or outside of marriage, despite advocacy of abstinence, about half of teenagers continue to be sexually active. Often with tragic results.
A congressional vote to stop earmarking funds for family-planning programs won't curtail sexual activity by those in no position to deal with its consequences. But it could prevent many from getting needed health care and information about avoiding disease and preventing unwanted pregnancies.
Is such a public policy really an improvement? If the full House and Senate also believe in political paybacks, it will fall to the states to do the right thing with their block-grant money - continue allocating funds for family planning. by CNB