Baltimore City Council members blasted Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the city health commissioner, for not informing them or the community of the plan to distribute Norplant to teen-age girls.
Councilman Carl Stokes, D-2nd, also charged that the distribution of Norplant, a contraceptive, is designed to reduce the black population.
During a grueling three-hour hearing last night on Dr. Beilenson's re-appointment by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, council members said they first heard about the plan in December, when it it surfaced in a newspaper.
Dr. Beilenson, who became more defensive and almost combative as the night wore on, dismissed the charges of population control. He proposed creating a Community Health Advisory Board in an effort to head off any misunderstandings about Health Department policies.
While council members grilled Dr. Beilenson on a variety of issues ranging from AIDS and tuberculosis to the Hawkins Point medical waste incinerator and a desire to see more health department contracts go to minority firms, the discussion always came back to Norplant.
Councilman Lawrence A. Bell III, D-4th, chairman of the council's executive appointments committee, opened the hearing by criticizing Dr. Beilenson for his handling of the Norplant plan, saying, "I don't want to see this sort of thing happen again in the future."
Mr. Bell said complaints to his office "are from people who are saying, 'You're having things done to us, instead of with us.' "
Mr. Stokes, the Norplant plan's most vocal council critic, called the program a "social policy" aimed at the black community. "It's not birth control, but population control," he said.
It was that kind of charge that fueled the controversy, which took on a racial overtone as residents testified against the Norplant policy.
Minister Jamil Muhammed, Baltimore representative of the Nation of Islam, said his group was "overwhelmingly, categorically" against "the Norplant option." He said his biggest concern, however, was with the health of the teen-agers. "We are not dealing with women. . . . These are girls," he said.
Dr. Beilenson repeatedly denied that the Norplant plan was "a tool of social engineering."
Finally, the weary health chief said: "I think it's kind of insulting to suggest that the mayor would allow the genocide of his own people, and that's what I'm hearing."
