Our View: The GOP’s war on birth control
For 45 years, the federal government has subsidized contraception for poor and uninsured women, quietly preventing millions of abortions and unintended pregnancies.
Once, Republicans saw that as a good thing. No longer.
In a petty and fiscally stupid gambit aimed at undermining one of the more effective family planning programs in a generation, the GOP-controlled Congress has gone gunning for Title X – a $286 million grant program that has saved taxpayers billions of dollars over the past 40 years.
House Republicans want to kill it entirely; Senate Republicans will settle for maiming. Either way, it’s a big deal for California, where Title X money underwrites cheap or free birth control, family planning advice, sexually transmitted disease screenings and other health services – though not abortions – for more than a million patients annually. All are low income; many uninsured. In all, more than a quarter of Title X service recipients live in California.
Yes, some who have received services are undocumented, but most are citizens who have fallen through the cracks of our economy for one reason or another – high-school drop outs, migrant workers, people between health plans. Whatever the reason, Title X funding has become a vital part of the health care safety net in this state, even after the Affordable Care Act.
The California Family Health Council, which administers the program here, says it averts about 275,000 unintended pregnancies a year.
And Republicans wonder why so many people see them as anti-women and anti-immigrant? But this time, people should also see them as fiscally irresponsible.
Researchers at the Guttmacher Institute have found that every dollar used in the program saves taxpayers more than $7 in other costs such as Medi-Cal and welfare.
It’s not as if contraception is controversial to anyone in 2015. A 2012 Gallup Poll found that birth control was approved of by 90 percent of Democrats, 89 percent of independents and 87 percent of Republicans. This isn’t about abortions – it’s about stopping abortions.
Unfortunately, conservatives looking to pick a fight with President Barack Obama have fixated on Title X as a target because one of its larger grant recipients is Planned Parenthood, which also performs abortions, as do some other recipients.
It’s a straw man. The vast majority of women who visit Planned Parenthood clinics go for birth control, not pregnancy termination. And we repeat, Title X money can’t be used for abortions.
In California, Planned Parenthood clinics represent only a fraction of the 400 agencies using Title X money to provide family planning services. Most grant recipients are community clinics, county health services departments, teen clinics at urban high schools, rural health care operations. The Stanislaus County Health Services Agency gets Title X funds. So do five other clinics in Modesto, one in Turlock, one in Merced and one in Manteca.
If, after 46 years, Title X is eliminated or slashed, the ax will fall not on Obama, as conservatives feverishly imagine, but on people most in need of access to reproductive health care and contraception. Young women – often poor – who do not want to become pregnant; at least not yet. The consequences will be suffered by the rural constituents of GOP congressmen including U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock and Rep. Jeff Denham.
Why any member of the California delegation would back this pound-foolish move is beyond comprehension. When Title X was passed in 1970, it had broad bipartisan support and was signed by Republican President Richard Nixon.
This story was originally published July 13, 2015 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Our View: The GOP’s war on birth control."