Family Planning

WASHINGTON -- Ending the first abortion-related skirmish of the 105th Congress, the Senate approved President Clinton's request yesterday for early release of $385 million in international family-planning funds.The 53-46 Senate vote clears the measure for Clinton's signature."This is a victory for women, children and families all over the world," said the White House press secretary, Mike McCurry.The money had been in limbo because anti-abortion lawmakers were concerned that the United States was supporting population-control groups that promoted abortion overseas.

Dr. Frances H. Trimble, a gynecologist who had been medical director of Planned Parenthood of Maryland for nearly three decades, died Friday of pneumonia at Roland Park Place. She was 94. "She took Planned Parenthood from a highly criticized small organization at the time and made it into a force," said Dr. J. Courtland Robinson, who succeeded Dr. Trimble as medical director. "It was about women's rights and contraception, and she gave it the medical leadership to make it go. And it grew into a large, large organization.

Within the next several days, legislation to cut the Title X (ten) family planning grant program will be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives. As pediatricians and adolescent health specialists, we are very concerned about the repercussions of this legislation on the health of our population. In our primary care clinic, Title X ensures that all of our patients regardless of insurance status receive reproductive healthcare. Recently, for instance, follow-up care provided a 21-year-old (financed by Title X because she had aged out of Medicaid eligibility)

Dr. Margaret P. "Peg" Brian, a retired Baltimore obstetrician-gynecologist, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at her home in Sacramento, Calif. The longtime Riderwood resident was 98. A daughter of a businessman and an artist, Margaret Paxson was born and raised in Philadelphia, where she graduated from Simon Gratz High School in 1931. After graduating from Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., in 1935, she earned her medical degree in 1939 from Temple University Medical School in Philadelphia.

BOSTON -- Do you worry that things are getting too touchy-feely on the home front? Are you afraid that the plea for common ground is becoming the all-too-common wisdom? Do you wonder if the culture warriors are becoming pacifists? Cynics, take heart. We offer you advance word from the troops preparing for the annual March for Life marking the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade on Monday. The parade's theme this year is: "Thou Shalt Protect the Equal Right to Life of Each Innocent Human in Existence at Fertilization.

FOUR decades ago, George Bush learned a political lesson he refuses to forget.The year was 1950, and the future president's father, Prescott Bush, was in a neck-and-neck U.S. Senate race in Connecticut. As the campaign entered its final days, disaster struck: Press reports disclosed that the senior Bush was a supporter of Planned Parenthood, causing an uproar among conservative voters. Prescott Bush lost the election by barely one-tenth of a percent of the vote. By all accounts, the birth-control issue cost him the election.

THE FEDERAL budget debacle has handed right-wing ideologues a victory long denied them in the normal legislative process. Faced with escalating pressure to re-open the government last month, Congress and the White House agreed to a foreign aid budget that imposes cuts and restrictions that could disrupt family planning efforts around the world.The result also shows the true colors of the small House band who stymied attempts at compromise. These people, led by Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.) are known for their ardent opposition to abortion, legal or illegal.

IN WAGING war against abortion, House Republicans have crippled foreign aid for family planning for the current budget year. Unless the Senate approach prevails in conference, they may succeed in doing the same for next year's appropriations. On Friday the Senate approved a foreign aid appropriations bill without the crippling restrictions on family planning imposed by the House.Few things are more important to the health and longevity of childbearing women in the Third World than access to good reproductive health care and reliable contraceptives.

HANOI, Vietnam -- The phrase on almost everyone's lips in Vietnam is "theo kip," which means "catch up," as in this impoverished nation catching up with the rest of the world. But the government is learning that prosperity is also linked to another expression: "family planning."Women in Vietnam have an average of 3.8 children each -- the highest fertility rate in the region. In Thailand, the figure is 2.9 children; China, which has gone so far as to monitor women's menstrual cycles and to insist on abortions, has reduced its fertility rate to 2.The fertility rate in Vietnam ensures that even if new family planning programs prove successful, the population will continue to grow for at least another 50 years.

Supreme Court today upheld a government ban on abortion counseling at 4,000 federally subsidized family planning clinics nationwide. The 5-4 decision said the ban, contained in regulations issued by the Reagan administration in 1988, does not violate free-speech rights or women's right to end their pregnancies. The family planning program, enacted in 1970 by Congress as Title X of the Public Health Service Act, funds clinics serving over 4 million low-income women each year.

Two issues that Republicans in Congress claim to care a great deal about are lowering the national deficit and reducing abortions. As a means of achieving these goals, they are intent on eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood and its family planning services provided under the Title X program, which has been helping individuals and families of low to moderate income since 1970. If Republicans are successful in excluding these funds from the final federal budget l, the results would most likely be the opposite of conservative's goals.

From my 16 years of experience serving as a Republican congresswoman, I recognize the fact that our country is facing major economic difficulties. I also believe that today's times necessitate pragmatic approaches and sound policy that will help us fix our economy and create jobs — not partisan political tactics that defy common sense and are a threat to Americans' well-being. I cannot stand with my party leadership in their dual attempts to undermine women's health by eliminating the Title X national family planning program and prohibiting federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Early Saturday morning, the House Republicans succeeded in passing a budget amendment stripping federal funds from Planned Parenthood. While not as disastrous as the complete defunding of Title X (all federally funded family planning services) — which is desired by many of the tea partiers in Congress — these cuts, if allowed to go forward, would seriously diminish the ability of millions of American women to plan how they and their families lead their lives. As a physician who has worked in family planning clinics in one of the poorest cities and one of the wealthiest suburban counties in the country, I have treated young and middle-aged women of all income levels and all backgrounds.

Within the next several days, legislation to cut the Title X (ten) family planning grant program will be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives. As pediatricians and adolescent health specialists, we are very concerned about the repercussions of this legislation on the health of our population. In our primary care clinic, Title X ensures that all of our patients regardless of insurance status receive reproductive healthcare. Recently, for instance, follow-up care provided a 21-year-old (financed by Title X because she had aged out of Medicaid eligibility)

I've had it. Enough is enough. Thanks to the Supreme Court, any fat cat can now pour unlimited funds to political candidates through so called "super pacs. " And now this corrupting practice has happened here in the 1st Congressional District where, as reported in the Baltimore Sun of October 19th, two wealthy individuals, a construction company owner and a New York hedge fund executive, have entered the Congressional race between Frank Kratovil and Andy Harris by donating a total of $500,000 to Mr. Harris, including more than $149,000 for TV ads attacking Mr. Kratovil ("Firm's $300,000 backs Harris")

Today, on World Contraception Day, the Surya clinic in Patna city in the Indian state of Bihar will, as always, be full of women, their children and their travel companions, waiting to see the doctors for family planning services. The female doctors are young, many recent graduates of the medical colleges, and sometimes pairing up to counsel clients on contraceptive methods. The government of India has accredited this private clinic run by the Janani network so that women opting for birth control pills, a 10-year IUD, or a three-month injectable contraceptive pay nothing.

THANKS to a 53-46 vote in the U.S. Senate, foreign aid funds for family planning programs will not be subjected to a punitive and administratively wasteful delay, as last year. That is good news for families around the world that depend on these programs for contraceptives and reproductive health care.U.S. law has long prohibited the use of aid funds for abortions, and abortion is illegal in most countries that receive family planning aid. That hasn't stopped abortion opponents from opposing programs that help families space their children far enough apart to give infants a better chance of survival and mothers a better chance of preserving their health.

Two decades ago, as U.S. representative to the Unite Nations, George Bush understood the family planning obstacles facing women in this country and abroad. Abortion was then illegal in most states, and contraceptives were available to only to women who could afford private physicians. Poor women had to rely on clinics and hospitals that were forbidden to discuss contraceptives. As a result, poor women usually had many children, adding a heavy economic burden to their families. In the international arena, Bush also understood the need for development assistance that included family planning -- otherwise, poor countries would be hard-pressed to keep up with the needs of a burgeoning population, much less attain a measure of self-sufficiency.

The voters of Maryland overwhelmingly approved the law protecting a woman's right to choose when to have a child. By a 62 percent-38 percent margin, they decided that the state should not interfere with this very personal decision before a fetus becomes viable. This reflects the will of the people, not "the extreme agenda of the abortion industry," as Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien wrote in his recent letter to the editor (Readers respond, Sept 12.). Under our law, once a doctor decides that the fetus is capable of sustained survival outside the womb, an abortion can be performed only if it is necessary to protect the life or health of the mother or if the fetus is affected by a genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality.