Birth-control foe to head family planning office

In yet another outrageous attack on women’s basic rights, the Bush administration has named Dr. Eric Keroack, a fierce opponent of reproductive rights, to be the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. This would install him as leader of the office that runs government-funded teen pregnancy, family planning and abstinence-only programs.

National women’s and pro-choice organizations have decried this nomination and called for massive pressure on the administration to stop it.

This appointment would give the anti-birth-control Keroack enormous power over federally funded family planning programs and their financing. It does not even require congressional confirmation. It is yet another offering to Bush’s ultra-right allies.

Keroack is from the religious-based ultra-right sector, which played a big role in getting Bush elected president. Although an obstetrician-gynecologist, who is sworn to “do no harm,” Keroack has a long history of railing against abortion rights, birth control, and sex education, all crucial to women’s reproductive health.

He is the “medical director” of an organization called “A Woman’s Concern,” which runs six bogus “crisis pregnancy counseling” facilities in Massachusetts whose aim is to stop abortions and contraception. Its Web site says that promotion of “birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.” (www.naral.org) Its fraudulent allegations even claim that birth control use increases unplanned pregnancies and abortion rates.

The doctor is also a member of the Medical Advisory Council of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a key supplier of abstinence-only education, which also attacks birth-control use. In this capacity, he preaches abstinence-only to women and young people, and is known to verbally assail women’s sexuality in his speeches. (Feminist Daily News Wire, Nov. 17)

This appointment is also a major attack on poor women. Whoever holds this office supervises the allocation of Title X funding under the Public Health Service Act. This is $283 million in annual grants “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who all who want and need them, with priority given to low-income persons.” (Washington Post, Nov. 17)

The program sustains 4,600 family planning clinics that assist 5 million low-income and uninsured women each year; a disproportionately high number are women of color. Free or low-cost services are provided. These include birth-control supplies, information and counseling, pregnancy care, physical examinations and cancer and HIV screenings.

The Department of Health and Human Services reports that it is the only federal program whose single aim is to provide family planning and reproductive health care. The Title X funding is crucial to the delivery of these services to those who need them the most.

It is clear that with this appointment the Bush gang intends to undermine family planning programs, and, in fact, will stop at nothing to eradicate women’s fundamental rights and reproductive health.

This administration has shown it will continue unabated to push through its ultra-right agenda despite the overwhelming sentiment of the people of the United States who support contraception and abortion rights and availability—vital cornerstones of women’s rights and health care. Once again, the Bush gang has demonstrated that it will continue the vicious assault on these rights in an all-out campaign to overturn them.

But as the victory against the right-wing abortion ban in South Dakota shows, the mass struggle can stay the hand of the virulent right-wing attacks on women’s rights.