Planned Parenthood Steamed Over Bush Budget’s Irresponsible Choice
By Brian Dolan
WASHINGTON—Buried deep in President Bush’s fiscal 2005 budget proposal are two italicized words that sharp-eyed critics at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America spotted and cried foul.
“Responsible Choices” is the description the White House used to introduce three paragraphs outlining its sexual abstinence education program.
“Responsible Choices” is also the 1999 trademarked title of Planned Parenthood’s sex education and reproductive health care programs, which include family planning services, emergency contraception and abortions.
The official title of the White House’s abstinence program is the “Adolescent Family Life” program, according to Patrick J. Sheeran, the director of the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Planned Parenthood formally requested in a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson earlier this month that the administration “cease and desist” from using its trademarked title.
“Your use of Responsible Choices as the title of your so-called ‘abstinence-only’ initiative is extremely confusing and troubling, considering the fact that your program not only denies choice but also deliberately censors medically accurate information on sexuality, contraception and the importance of condoms in reducing the risk of sexually transmitted infections,” Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, wrote in the letter.
Sheeran said “Responsible Choices” is a label that accurately describes the abstinence education program, though it is not the program’s title, as Feldt suggested. But Sheeran said he didn’t know how the administration settled on the phrase.
“Our program has and does offer responsible choices,” Sheeran said. “Let me put it this way: maybe we don’t offer as vast an array of choices as Planned Parenthood, and I can’t say what choices they offer because I can’t speak for them, but our program deserves a lot of merit.”
The White House’s budget proposal says abstinence education is the way to combat sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
“Each year, there are 15 million new sexually transmitted disease cases in the United States, and one-quarter of them are teenagers,” the proposed budget states. “Abstinence Education grants provide support to communities and states to develop, implement and evaluate programs for 12 to 18 year olds that promote abstinence and encourage youth to make responsible and healthy choices…. To provide parents with the tools they need to talk to their children about responsible choices, the budget doubles the President’s financial commitment to $270 million.”
Feldt’s letter holds that only a wide range of contraceptive options will reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and abortions.
The National Institutes of Health, another HHS agency, financed a study of a nationwide abstinence program in which students 12 to18 years old pledged not to have sex until they were married. Such pledges reduced premarital sex and led to earlier marriages, but they did not cut the rate of sexually transmitted diseases, according to the study published earlier this month.
About 15,000 youths participated in the study. Eighty-eight percent of those who pledged to remain virgins until they were married went back on their word. Adolescents who pledged abstinence were much less likely than others to use contraceptives the first time they had sex, and consequently their risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases and becoming pregnant was as high as among non-pledgers, the study found.
