The politics of birth control

By the time Senate subcommittee hearings on the "population crisis" ended in 1968, a sizeable consensus had begun to emerge favoring government support of voluntary family planning programs at home and abroad. The goal to develop a national family planning program was easier to set than to accomplish, however, and there have been no lack of difficult questions to haggle over in the past 20 years. Beginning with the Johnson administration, the executive branch of government has tended to favor block-grant funding of family planning services, while Congress has insisted on categorical funding. Conflict has also existed over financial eligibility for government-supported services, over whether teenagers and unmarried women should be served in publicly supported clinics and over which services should be included in the definition of family planning. The Reagan administration has exacerbated the conflicts with attempts to redefine family planning by placing primary emphasis on natural methods and abstinence for those who wish to prevent pregnancy and attempts to deny funding to both domestic and foreign programs that support access to abortion. While future government support for family planning programs does not seem seriously threatened, funding has not grown in 15 years, once the effects of inflation are taken into account, and most programs have had to limit eligibility to survive. The Bush administration is unlikely to be as confrontational as the Reagan administration on the subject of family planning, but the political reality is that conflict can be expected to continue.