The Assault on Birth Control and Family Planning Programs

October 2003 — Executive Summary

A Planned Parenthood Report on the Bush Administration and its Allies

Executive Summary

October 2003

The Bush administration has made clear its goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and denying women in this country and around the world access to safe, legal abortion at all stages of a pregnancy. What has been less visible, but equally deadly, is this administration's efforts to undermine access to birth control and effective family planning methods.

An emerging campaign against family planning is underway across the country and in international arenas, led by the Bush administration and its allies in Congress and state legislatures. This report examines some of the most visible elements of these attacks including:

• efforts to strip contraceptive coverage from the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan and limit Medicaid family planning expansions
• blocking legislation to require insurance companies to provide coverage for prescription contraceptive drugs and devices
• freezing funding for family planning programs
• attempting to retool the primary federal family planning program ("Title X") into promoting abstinence for unmarried adults of any age over comprehensive family planning health care services
• attacking condom use, removing scientifically based information about condoms from government Web sites, and promoting an anti-condom agenda in international arenas
• attacking the birth control pill, IUDs, and other forms of contraception as interfering with implantation of fertilized eggs
• stacking federal health advisory committees with anti-condom, anti-contraception zealots determined to replace science with ideology
• threatening critics of the administration's anti-family planning policies with censorship, audits, and defunding

If the American public knew how aggressively the Bush administration and its right-wing allies are attempting to undermine family planning, they would repudiate these efforts. But they don't know. It is essential that we act now, before it is too late, to educate the public and stop this assault on fundamental reproductive rights.

Prepared by Public Policy Division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Published: 10.10.03 | Updated: 10.10.03

Published by the Katharine Dexter McCormick Library

©2003 Planned Parenthood^® Federation of America, Inc.
All rights reserved.


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