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Bush’s 2009 Budget Slashes Family Planning
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 – President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget would cut family planning funding at home and abroad by drastic amounts while increasing support for abstinence-only sex education programs that don’t work, reproductive health advocates charged today.
The proposal would cut Medicaid funding for family planning by $570 million in fiscal 2009 and by $3.3 billion over five years. It would reduce family planning funds at the U.S. Agency for International Development by $134 million and flat-fund the Title X domestic family planning program at $300 million, the same level as in fiscal 2008, despite increases in demand for reproductive health services. Meanwhile, funding for the Department of Health and Human Services’s Community-Based Abstinence Education Program would rise by $27.7 million.
“The president has this budget backwards,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “He’s increasing funding for programs that don’t work and decreasing funding for programs that are proven effective.” The Medicaid cuts, she said, would be “devastating” for low-income women who rely on the program for reproductive health care and would “do nothing more than increase the number of unintended pregnancies and the rate of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.”
Brian Dixon of Population Connection said Bush was “demonstrating once again his contempt for the needs of poor women and families around the world.” He noted that demand for contraceptives worldwide is expected to rise 40 percent in the next 15 years, largely because of population growth.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) cited several government and scientific reports finding that abstinence-only sex education programs do not work in lowering teen pregnancy rates. The Bush proposal, she said, “placed politics over science” and “shortchanges the prevention programs that are the most effective.”
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