The Reagan administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has come under fire from many fronts in recent days over teen pregnancy and family-planning efforts. Key conservatives have resigned from an HHS teen-pregnancy panel, charging the group will not promote sexual abstinence for teens, and new regulations designed to separate abortion and the government’s family-planning program have prompted a flood of legal challenges.
Pregnancy Panel Flap
James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, William Pierce, president of the National Committee for Adoption, and Terrence Olson, associate dean at Brigham Young University (Utah), have resigned from their advisory roles on the Panel on Teen Pregnancy Prevention. HHS Secretary Otis Bowen appointed the panel in September to “help organizations best able to communicate with teens exchange information and enhance efforts to prevent teen pregnancy.” The panel includes representatives from 15 national groups. Dobson, Pierce, and Olson were “resource members” who were to provide advice and consultation to the panelists but would have no vote on recommendations.
In a letter to Bowen, Dobson said the panel was stacked with people who “believe our task as educators is to dispense contraceptives liberally and then teach the young to express their sexuality without producing babies.” Dobson said only four of the panelists “represented the vast number of Americans who favor sexual abstinence among unmarried adolescents.”
Wrote Dobson, “I’ve seen stacked decks before, but this one is ridiculous.”
At a Washington, D.C., press conference, Dobson emphasized studies that suggest that increased distribution of contraceptives leads to increased sexual activity for teens. He also pointed out the increasing health dangers facing sexually active teens. Dobson said the three had chosen to resign from the panel, “rather than endorse a program which we consider irresponsible, dishonest, and giving up on our nation’s young people.”
On his nationally broadcast radio show, Dobson has urged listeners to write to Bowen and the White House of their view that abstinence is the best way to prevent teen pregnancy.
The panel is to issue a report later this year with recommendations on how to prevent teen pregnancy, but Pierce said he believes “local people need to be aware that there may be federally funded programs coming into their areas without some of the strategies that we felt were necessary.”
Meanwhile, the new family-planning regulations, which were recently published in the Federal Register, were announced by President Reagan late last summer (CT, Sept. 4, 1987, p. 56). Under the new rules, federally funded family-planning clinics are prohibited from giving women any counseling or referrals for abortion. In addition, in situations where federally funded family-planning services and nonfederally funded abortion services coexist, the government will determine on a case-by-case basis whether there is adequate separation. HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs Nabers Cabaniss said the purpose of the regulations is to tighten enforcement of the Public Health Service Act of 1970. That act states, “None of the [Title X] funds … shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”
Last year, the government’s Title X program supported nearly 4,000 family-planning clinics, with $140 million being distributed among some 89 different groups. Many of those groups are the most vehement opponents of the new regulations.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, whose nationwide affiliates receive about $30 million annually from Title X, filed suit in a federal court in Colorado to block implementation of the regulations. In separate lawsuits, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and state governments, including New York and Massachusetts, are also opposing the rules. And federal judges in Boston, New York, and Denver have issued injunctions against enforcement of the new rules while the litigation takes place.
The lawsuits charge that the new regulations are unconstitutional and go against congressional intent in the Public Health Service Act.
National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association Executive Director Scott Swirling called the regulations a “gag rule.” “Pregnant poor women receiving medical care from federally funded family-planning clinics would not be able to obtain complete, accurate, objective, and unbiased information and counseling regarding all their options for managing an unintended pregnancy, including abortion,” he said.
Cabaniss defends the regulations as both legal and constitutional. “We are talking about federal subsidy of family planning services, not programs that serve pregnant women,” Cabaniss said. “What we are saying is that in the federal family-planning program, federal tax dollars are going to subsidize methods of contraception, natural family-planning methods, infertility services, and general reproductive health care.… If a woman is diagnosed as being pregnant at a federal family-planning program, she should be referred to a program designed to care and counsel pregnant women.” Cabaniss added she expects the fight will ultimately end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
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