Not family-friendly
BY NOW, Americans might expect President Bush to appoint an opponent of abortion to a key public health position in his administration. But to name an opponent of family planning to oversee the nation's family planning program is perverse even by the standards of a government that doesn't much believe in government.
Marblehead gynecologist Eric Keroack's appointment as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the Health and Human Services Department exemplifies the concerns of women's health advocates who have long warned that the antiabortion movement will not stop at abortion. Dr. Keroack oversees a network of "crisis pregnancy" centers across Massachusetts, where staffers not only try to talk women out of having abortions, but also oppose the use of contraception, even for married couples.
A Woman's Concern operates six free pregnancy resource clinics, where it promotes abstinence -- or "sexual purity and self-mastery" -- for its clients. It will not distribute brochures that promote contraception or make referrals to any health center that distributes birth control products. That means any kind at all, not just the morning-after pill or other methods that some consider akin to abortion because they can destroy a fertilized egg. Although it recognizes that some abortion opponents "find no inherent fault with some forms of birth control" among married couples, the rules at A Woman's Concern apply to sex within marriage.
Keroack has promoted some novel ideas in his research involving sexuality. He has co-authored studies claiming the release of the chemical oxytocin during sexual arousal creates a kind of addiction to sex, and that extensive previous sexual experience interferes with the ability of couples to bond. A Woman's Concern also makes a curious leap in its policy toward contraception, saying that "distribution of birth control, especially among adolescents, actually increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion." As evidence it cites Massachusetts Department of Public Health Statistics that 72 percent of women with unplanned pregnancies in the 1990s had been using contraception at the time.
It is accepted science as well as common sense that women who space their pregnancies, have smaller families, or avoid getting pregnant as teenagers will live healthier, more prosperous lives, whether in developing countries or in the United States. This is one area of "common ground" that both sides of the abortion debate could agree upon -- a centrist message that last week's election results underscored. To argue that abstinence is the only acceptable route to family planning divides the country, ignores reality, and condemns millions of women to poorer lives.
