Look where our family planning money went

John Cornyn had some brushing up to do. It was 2002. The Republican with the senatorial hair was running for U.S. Senate and living out of the party playbook. In an interview, every answer was pure boilerplate. Then I asked him a question for which he clearly had no spiral-bound answer.

Did he support the Bush administration's policy of defunding international organizations that advocate abortion rights? Family planning organizations call it the "global gag rule." Cornyn said yes he did, because he didn't support American tax dollars paying for abortions.

I pointed out that the issue wasn't funding abortions. That is, was, already prohibited. The issue was telling family planning organizations what they could or could not say if they got U.S. dollars.

Cornyn's lack of command of such a pertinent fact —that tax dollars can't and don't fund abortions — came to mind recently when, as is too often the case, matters of vital family planning once again got ensnarled in anti-abortion politics..

In question are two moves by the Texas Legislature that foolishly impair vital women's health services. The first is a budget rider that diverts $20 million over two years away from traditional family planning providers and allots it to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC). The second would divert $5 million over the biennium from those same providers to crisis pregnancy centers.

The clear intent of both of these initiatives is to undercut funding for women's clinics such as Planned Parenthood, with their traditional role of using pass-through federal funds to provide family planning and health care to the poor.

Since Waco has a FQHC — the Family Practice Center — one was to assume that at least the money would stay in our community when the local Planned Parenthood affiliate lost $159,000 for the upcoming year. But that's not the case. The Family Practice Center didn't apply for the funds. It doesn't perform the services Planned Parenthood does. It often refers patients to Planned Parenthood and vice versa. So, where did Greater Waco's family planning money go? It went to the Georgetown Community Clinic, which is one of the few FQHCs which applied for the money. It ended up with a windfall of more than $550,000.

What idiocy — to direct federal money away from agencies that use it for its intended purpose. State Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, author of the budget rider, said this is just a better way of using the money. Pray tell, how?

What Deuell has done is hit Planned Parenthood where it hurts. And the only reason in the Republican playbook for that is that some Planned Parenthood affiliates do abortions.

Even more egregious is the rider authored by Sen. Tommy Williams, R-Woodlands, that directs $5 million in family planning funds to crisis pregnancy centers. These are agencies that don't do health care. They are unregulated and unlicensed. They shouldn't get a dime of family planning funding.

The irony is that only two agencies statewide have applied for this money, according to a recent story in the Austin Chronicle. One of the agencies says it will give women facing unplanned pregnancies "a relationship with Jesus Christ." The other has no contacts or even direct evidence that it exists.

Abortion? As one official told the Chronicle, "Planned Parenthood does more in one day to prevent unplanned pregnancy than Tommy Williams will do in his entire legislative career."

As for tax dollars paying for abortions though women's health clinics, it's illegal. Any Planned Parenthood affiliates that perform abortion must keep separate sets of books and use privately funded locations so that tax dollars do what they're supposed to do. Sen. Cornyn's "funding abortion" concern is moot. But the funding of birth control is not.

As state Sen. Judith Zaffirini said, "I . . . believe strongly that redirecting money for family planning services may result in an increased number of births, an increased number of unwanted pregnancies and an increased number of abortions." Wow. A trifecta. Smart. So very smart.

<< Waco Tribune-Herald -- 2/14/06 >>

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