‘A Policy Straight Out of The Handmaid’s Tale’
By Sarah Okeson
The 32-page proposed regulation mentions contraception three
times aside from the footnotes and proposes removing the requirement that
family planning services be medically approved, saying it could cause
confusion.
“Medical doctors and professional organizations can differ on
which methods of health care they approve, including different methods of
family planning,” said the regulation prepared under abstinence advocate Valerie Huber, now
a senior policy adviser at Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services.
“This policy is straight out of The
Handmaid’s Tale,” said Dawn Laguens, executive
vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of
America.
Trump said at an anti-abortion gala sponsored by Susan B. Anthony List that the new rule would “prohibit Title X funding from going to any clinic that performs abortions.”
Vice President Mike Pence, who has pushed Congress to defund Planned
Parenthood, has said that legal abortion would end in the
United States “in our time.”
Title X, signed
into law in 1970 by former Republican President Richard Nixon, serves more than
4 million low-income women and a much smaller number of men. Nearly two-thirds
of patients in the program are at or below the federal poverty
line.
In 2016, programs funded by Title X provided 5.1 million tests
for sexually transmitted infections, including 1.2 million HIV tests and about
700,000 Pap tests. About 80% of patients receive birth control which helped
prevent an estimated 800,000 unintended pregnancies in 2015.
Researchers call areas where it is difficult to get birth control “contraception deserts.” About
a third of adult U.S. women who tried to get a prescription for
hormonal birth control reported problems.
A 2016 study published in
the Journal of Adolescent Health credited better use of contraception to
reducing teen pregnancies, which dropped by 25% from 2007 to 2011.
Our nation’s teen birth rate remains
high compared with other industrialized nations, particularly among poor and
minority women. More than a quarter of U.S. women become
pregnant by age 20.
A Case Western study in 2005 of Ohio abstinence programs where
Huber managed the state’s abstinence education efforts found they misrepresented religious
convictions as scientific fact and contained false information
about contraceptives such as implying that condom use can lead to death.
The latest round of grants is just for seven months which
could help the Trump administration push to defund Planned Parenthood and other
organizations that help girls and women make their own choices about when or if
to have babies.
Action
Box/What You Can Do About It
Call
Valerie Huber, a senior policy adviser at HHS, at 202-690-7694 or write to her
at 1101 Wootton Parkway, Suite 700, Rockville, MD 20852.
Call
HHS Secretary Alex Azar at 202-690-7000, write to him at 200 Independence Ave.,
N.W., Washington, DC 20201 or comment on his Twitter page.
Donate to Planned
Parenthood.