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B The Poliitcial Storms over Family Planning
Pages 278-285

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From page 278...
... This, however, was not to be. The year 1994 marked the ninth consecutive year that this federal program, intended to equalize opportunity of access to family planning services, proved unable to secure a formal congressional authorization.
From page 279...
... Catholic Conference, prohibiting the use of Title X funds "in programs where abortion is a method of family planning." The Conference Report that accompanied the legislation further specified that the funds could be used "only to support preventive family planning services, population research, infertility services, and other related medical, informational, and educational activities." Thus, although the prohibition on the use of family planning funds for abortion was clear, the inclusion of contraceptive sterilization could only be inferred by a careful interpretation of the phrasing "preventive family planning." The only unambiguously endorsed means of family planning (beyond periodic abstinence) was contraception, as defined and understood at the time, but this was no small achievement given a century or more of religious and public controversy and the continuing opposition of some religious organizations.
From page 280...
... The commission, with representatives of the laity, the scientific and medical communities, and theologians and members of the top hierarchy of the Catholic Church, did eventually recommend, after a 2-year period of deliberation and by a sizable majority, the approval of all medically appropriate methods of fertility regulation with the exception of abortion and contraceptive sterilization. Contrary to the commission's recommendations, however, the Pope reaffirmed, via the 1967 Encyclical Humanae Vitae, the Catholic Church's ban on sterilization and abortion and also on all forms of contraception, as distinct from periodic sexual abstinence, which is considered a licit method of funnily panning.
From page 281...
... These developments were accompanied in many of the mainline Protestant and Reform Jewish organizations by an examination or re-examination of the essential nature of relationships marital or otherwise with the emphasis on the morality of sexual relationships shifting somewhat from a strict prohibition of all intercourse outside of a religiously sanctioned marriage, to the importance of such relationships being non-exploitative and being based on a commitment between equal partners to mutual support and growth. The Catholic Church and a number of fundamentalist Protestant churches continue to maintain that any sexual activity outside the bounds of a properly sanctified marriage is by definition impermissible and sinful.
From page 282...
... At the same time, Congress adopted amendments to the SSA in 1972 that specifically required the states to provide "family planning services and supplies" to all Medicaid recipients desiring these services, including "minors who can be considered sexually active." To encourage the states to do so, Congress also provided a preferential federal matching rate to the states of 90 percent. In June 1973, a few months after the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion throughout He United States, the U.S.
From page 283...
... Food and Drug Administration but contraceptive sterilization and abortion as well. An immediate controversy ensued, with some groups demanding positive assurance that sterilization and abortion be covered unambiguously and others objecting vehemently to the apparent inclusion of abortion.
From page 284...
... The desire to, in effect, pigeonhole women into two categories, responsible contraceptors and wanton individuals without regard for human life, proved ultimately to be neither realistic nor politic. Even in the face of repeated veto threats on the part of President Bush, Congress came closer year by year (and, in 1992, within a few votes)
From page 285...
... Finally, although it is probably true that most Americans do not view abortion "as a method of family planning" in the sense that they would make a deliberate decision to use it as such, it is also clear that neither in science, in practice, nor in law is there a "bright line" to be drawn or a "wall of separation" to be erected in "matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child," in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court.


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