Religious organizations can no longer receive federal funds for programs that promote sexual abstinence among teenagers and adoption as an alternative to abortion. Federal district court judge Charles Richey has ruled that such grants, under a program known as the Adolescent Family Life Act, are unconstitutional because they have the “primary effect of advancing religion.” However, he allowed nonreligious groups to continue receiving the federal grants.
Richey did not rule unconstitutional the entire Adolescent Family Life Act, also known as Title XX. As a whole, he found the law has “a valid secular purpose of combating teenage pregnancy and associated ills.” Congress passed the law in 1981 as a $14 million annual grant program (CT, Mar. 19, 1982, p. 41; Jan. 17, 1986, p. 50). At the time, opponents attacked it as a “chastity bill,” and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the law in court.
Critics of Richey’s ruling say it equates moral alternatives with religion, denies taxpayers access to programs that are consistent with their values, and effectively quarantines religion from the public policy process. The ruling’s most far-reaching impact may be to limit the participation of religious organizations in other government programs, such as child-abuse prevention and drug education.
“When government moves into a field that has traditionally been the domain of religion—such as moral education—and then takes over, it has serious repercussions for religious liberty,” said Michael Paulsen of the Christian Legal Society.
Proponents of the grant program see it as a necessary supplement to federal family-planning programs administered under another law, known as Title X. Most of the Title X money—totaling approximately $140 million annually—pays for abortion counseling and the distribution of contraceptives. But despite those efforts, 1 million adolescents become pregnant each year, and 40 percent of those pregnancies end in abortion.
The ACLU contested the Adolescent Family Life Act’s financing of counseling and education programs focusing on abstinence and carried out by religious organizations. Twenty-three of the act’s 85 currently funded projects are religiously affiliated, according to the court decision. Most are Roman Catholic, sponsored by Catholic Charities USA and local dioceses. Other religious programs that receive funds include Lutheran Social Services, Covenant House, and Brigham Young University. Some that are listed by the court, such as Search Institute in Minneapolis, deny they are religious.
Organizations receiving grants from the program have produced alternative sex-education materials that emphasize abstinence. In addition, the program’s administrators say, grantees report improved parent-child communication, fewer teenage girls becoming pregnant more than once, and the development of better attitudes about postponing sexual activity. The curriculum materials and other programs have been used in communities nationwide, and they may continue with private funding.
ACLU lawyers charged that giving grants to these groups “mandates religious involvement” in a federal program. In addition, the ACLU brief points to the religious convictions of a Washington, D.C., Title XX staff member. The individual is cited as an “example of how religion permeates the act and its administration,” said attorney Lynn Paltrow. Officials who administer the Title XX grants would not comment on the case because it is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In his decision prohibiting grants to religious groups, Richey states it is not sufficient for these grants to stipulate that only secular activities may be funded. The programs involve “impressionable youngsters,” Judge Richey wrote, “[and] provide a crucial symbolic link between government and religion,” illustrated by the fact that some programs take place in church buildings.
The decision could set a legal precedent against using government funds for programs that offer alternatives to abortion. Said Ed Grant, executive director of Americans United for Life: “The effect of the ruling is to disqualify religious organizations from participation in a program with a valid secular purpose because their religious tenets happen to coincide with public policy.”
By Pamela Pearson Wong.
