Limiting Family Planning for the Poor 
by Gene C. Gerard
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 21, 2006



 

Last week President Bush appointed Dr. Eric Keroack to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Population Affairs. This position is primarily responsible for overseeing the Office of Family Planning, which is charged with providing access to contraceptive information and supplies to low-income individuals. But Dr. Keroack has a long-standing opposition to contraception and abortion. Through this appointment, President Bush will severely limit contraceptive information and choices to many of America’s poorest women.

Dr. Keroack was previously the medical director of “A Woman’s Concern,” a non-profit organization operating crisis-pregnancy centers in Massachusetts. According to its literature, A Woman’s Concern works to encourage “abortion-vulnerable women” to go through with their pregnancies. The organization characterizes contraceptives as “demeaning to women.” Consequently, A Woman’s Concern doesn’t provide information regarding birth control at its clinics, and advocates sexual abstinence until marriage.

It appears as if Dr. Keroack’s chief qualification, in the eyes of President Bush, for his new position is his strong support for abstinence-only sex education. In a presentation at the 2003 International Abstinence Leadership Conference he indicated, “Pre-Marital Sex is really modern germ warfare.” And in 2004, while criticizing the American Medical Association’s support for comprehensive sex education, Dr. Keroack proclaimed, “For the first time, we have found a high quality sexual education that has actually begun to reverse these deadly trends -- abstinence education. Why would we want to stop it?” 

Since taking office, the Bush administration has channeled more than $600 million into abstinence-until-marriage sex education programs. Yet no scientific study to date has demonstrated that curriculums that only promote abstinence actually curtail teenage sex. In 2001, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development released a monumental study of approximately 100,000 teenagers who had taken an abstinence pledge. The study found that after 18 months most broke the pledge by engaging in sexual intercourse. And since they didn’t plan on doing so, the majority failed to use contraception.

Still, Dr. Keroack has maintained, “Abstinence education is the first mechanism that has actually made a positive impact on the devastation caused by the errant sexual education programs of the 1970s and 1980s.” But there’s simply no evidence to support this. Last year, the Texas Department of Health conducted a review of abstinence-only sex education programs in that state. The review concluded that the programs had “little impact” on teenagers’ behavior. In fact, the review found that girls in the ninth grade were actually five percent more likely to engage in sex after being exposed to an abstinence-only curriculum. And boys in the tenth grade were 15 percent more likely to engage in sex after participating in abstinence-only classes.

The Office of Family Planning is mandated to provide a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services. Given this responsibility it’s troubling that A Woman’s Concern, the pregnancy centers Dr. Keroack previously supervised, has repeatedly been accused of deceptive practices. The attorney general for Massachusetts has received numerous complaints in the past two years from women who maintained that they were misled by the pregnancy centers. The complaints indicate that women were told by A Woman’s Concern that they perform abortions, but once the women arrived for their appointments they were accosted and told that they were “killing [their] babies.”

Dr. Keroack used the clinics to pioneer his technique of showing ultrasound images of fetuses to women to encourage them not to have abortions. He previously compared this technique to car repairs. In a letter written to the Massachusetts legislature in 2001 Dr. Keroack maintained, “Even Midas lets you look at your old muffler before they advise you to change it.” It’s difficult to believe that someone so biased can impartially oversee the federal government’s provision of contraceptive services.

Equally controversial, Dr. Keroack has compared teenage sexual activity to drug use. In 2001 he theorized that engaging in sex prevents teenagers from developing emotional relationships, owing to an overproduction of the hormone oxytocin. According to a paper co-written by Dr. Keroack, “Just as in heroine addiction, the person involved will experience sex withdrawal and will need to move on to a new sex playmate.” But the scientific community rejected his theory, largely because it was not based on research conducted on teenagers, but rather on small rodents found on the Great Plains.

The Office of Family Planning oversees a yearly budget of $288 million and operates a national network of approximately 4,600 clinics, providing reproductive health services to five million persons annually. For more than 30 years these family planning clinics have played an important role in ensuring access to contraceptive services for low-income and uninsured women at no cost or at a reduced cost. Under the direction of Dr. Keroack, the services and information provided by the clinics will substantially decrease.  President Bush has demonstrated a calloused disregard for the nation’s poor with this appointment.

Gene C. Gerard has taught history, religion, and ethics for 14 years at a number of colleges in the Southwest and is a contributing author to the forthcoming book Americans at War, by Greenwood Press. He writes a political blog for the world news website OrbStandard.

Other Articles by Gene C. Gerard

* Lawsuit Intends to Force the Bush Administration to Recognize the Constitution
* Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Endangers us All
* Failing Soldiers at Home, Too
* The Political Corruption of Science
* Backpedaling at the IRS
* Prescription Politics
* The We the (Evangelical) People Act
* Bush Administration Failing America’s AIDS Crisis
* Conservatives Favor “Purity” Over Cancer Vaccine
* Abstaining from Sex Education Politics
* A Very Questionable Judicial Nomination
* The Decider Nominates Chief Polluter for the EPA
* Iraq Can’t be Compared to Post-World War II
* The Politics of Foreign Aid
* The Air Force Soars to the Right
* Housing Cuts for the Poor, Tax Cuts for the Rich
* True to its History, the FBI is Still Violating Civil Liberties
* Another Unsavory Judicial Nomination
* Out of Touch with Military Reality
* The US and Iran: Birds of a Feather
* Bush Administration Ignored Coal Mine Safety Issues
* Tax Shelters Disguised as Health Care Reform
* Tax Breaks for the Wealthy
* Bush Chose Iraq Over America’s Homeless
* Bush Abuses Recess Appointment Power
* Another Brownie in the Making
* Pharmacists Can’t Say No to Contraception
* Any Soldier Will Do For the Pentagon
* Kansas Attorney General is Bush’s Kind of Guy
* VA Seeks to Punish Iraq War Veterans
* Soldiers Shouldn’t Serve as Police Officers
* Republicans Require Health Insurance for Immigrants Only
* Poverty Increases as Incomes Decline Under President Bush
* As in World War II, The President Should Limit Oil Profits
* Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts and the Voting Rights Act
* The Flag Should Not Infringe on the First Amendment
* President Bush Must Address Outsourcing
* Consumer Confidence Decline Surprises Only the Bush Administration
* Conservative Ideology Hinders U.S. AIDS Policy
* The Record of Judge John Roberts
* Gay Marriage Critics Are Misguided
* Democrats Can Succeed Without the Filibuster
* Turkey is Not a Role Model for the Middle East
* Violations of Civil Liberties are an American Tradition
* The Economy Turned the Corner and Is Headed in the Wrong Direction
* Bush Administration Promotes Global Conflicts by Rewarding Allies
* Bush Administration Attempts to Influence Global HIV/AIDS Policy
* Conservatives, Judicial Impeachment, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
* Appeals Court Nominee Janice Rogers Brown Merits the Filibuster
* Zimbabwe’s Very American Election
* Appeals Court Nominee Thomas B. Griffith is a Poor Choice
* President Bush’s Use of Pardons Isn’t Very Compassionate
* E.P.A. Nominee Supports Testing of Chemicals on Human Subjects
* Military Policy on Gays is Costly and Dangerous
* Bush Administration AIDS Policies Continue to Fall Short
* Bush’s Judicial Nominations are Hardly Mainstream
* Bush’s Budget is at Odds With His Rhetoric
* Iraq’s Election Will Not Guarantee Democracy
* The Politics of SpongeBob

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