Who Is Eric Keroack?

As DASPA, Keroack will advise U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Michael O. Leavitt on vital issues related to reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy in the United States and, more important, will oversee Title X — America's family planning program, which provides high-quality family planning and preventive health services to millions of low-income individuals each year.

Title X Matters

Title X has a proven track record as a cost-effective program for preventing unintended pregnancies and improving the health of women.  Since its inception more than 30 years ago, Title X has helped prevent an estimated 20 million unintended pregnancies.  But in that time, funding for this vital program has dropped by nearly 60 percent, when adjusted for inflation, even as health care costs have soared and as an increasing number of women are in need of publicly funded family planning services.  According to a recent report by the Guttmacher Institute, doubling the current Title X budget of $283 million could prevent 244,000 unplanned pregnancies each year and save Americans roughly $800 million. 

But the question remains — what will happen to Title X under Keroack?  Will he favor unproven abstinence-only programs when doling out education and counseling grants?  Will he instate new regulations for family planning clinics that will make the delivery of medically accurate, unbiased health information more difficult?  Or will he advocate for more funding for effective pregnancy prevention, such as comprehensive, medically accurate sex education and birth control access? Title X is charged with providing "access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them," according to HHS.  But Keroack has a history of involvement with organizations that do exactly the opposite — they promote an anti-contraception, anti-choice, and pro-abstinence-only ideology, bolstered by medical misinformation.

Every Woman’s Concern

Much of the opposition to Keroack’s appointment stems from his previous role as medical director for A Woman’s Concern (AWC), a nonprofit group that runs six so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” in Massachusetts..  Under Keroack's supervision, AWC health centers would not distribute, encourage the use of, or offer referrals for contraceptive drugs and devices.  AWC states in its material that “the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.” 

The group not only opposes contraception and abortion, it goes one step further — promoting misleading and deceptive reproductive health information.  AWC's materials incorrectly characterize traditional forms of birth control as abortifacients, wrongly claim that the distribution of contraception increases the number of pregnancies, and distort research to make false claims about condoms and HIV.  The group also advances the myth that abortion increases a woman's risk for breast cancer, despite scientific studies that have consistently shown otherwise.

And despite their masquerade as family planning clinics, the only “services” AWC “crisis pregnancy centers” provide are pregnancy tests and ultrasounds administered for the sole purpose of emotionally intimidating women into carrying unintended pregnancies to term.  This type of biased counseling flies in the face of the Title X requirement that women facing an unintended pregnancy be provided nondirective options counseling upon request — meaning neutral, factual information on prenatal care and delivery; infant care, foster care or adoption; and pregnancy termination.

Unexcused Abstinence

AWC is also the parent organization of Healthy Futures, the largest faith-based abstinence-only program in Massachusetts, and the group to which Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney awarded nearly $1 million in federal funding to provide abstinence-only programs to the state's public schools.  Romney's decision earlier this year marked the first time these federal abstinence-only funds were directed toward the classroom in Massachusetts.  (In previous years, those funds went toward media campaigns.)

Keroack himself lectures far and wide on abstinence for organizations like The Abstinence Clearinghouse.  In his prepared talks, he has compared premarital sex to “modern germ warfare” and, drawing from a study on rodents, suggests that premarital sex diminishes a person's ability to emotionally bond with future partners. 

The Road Ahead

In his new role, Keroack will have primary influence over the type of information and services disseminated to millions of women, men, and teens in need of reliable reproductive health care.  Many critics of his appointment are deeply concerned that he may develop new regulations for Title X clinics, set new priorities for the program as a whole, and influence how federal money is spent, to the detriment of the health of women and teens across the country.  Indeed, his appointment will most significantly affect the people who are least able to access high-quality, scientifically sound, and medically accurate reproductive health care — the poor and uninsured. 

This does not sit well with the more than two dozen leading reproductive health care providers and advocates who have asked Secretary Leavitt to pull Keroack's appointment, nor the 110 legislators who have called on President Bush to do the same, nor the more than 111,000 individuals who had signed Planned Parenthood's petition to replace Keroack with a family planning advocate who is for family planning, nor the countless editorial boards across the nation that have seriously questioned Keroack's appointment.  But the administration has thus far stood by the appointment.  Indeed, in response to letters from members of both the House and Senate calling for Keroack’s appointment to be rescinded, a spokesperson for HHS defended the appointment, saying that Keroack “has expressed to us that he will fulfill his programmatic responsibilities in accordance with the law, and we believe him."  But Keroack has remained silent on the matter, and his history does not give reason for optimism.

Planned Parenthood is sponsoring an online petition addressed to Secretary Leavitt urging him to replace Dr. Keroack with an administrator who is committed to protecting women's health.  To date, more than 111,000 people have added their names to the list.  We urge you to do the same.