Amid all the excitement and speculation surrounding today’s primaries, one important piece of political news has been largely overlooked — the president’s 2009 budget that was released yesterday, and what it means for sexual and reproductive health.
Keeping in line with his anti-family-planning record, the president proposed cutting Medicaid funding for family planning by $570 million in FY 2009, and by $3.3 billion over five years. This would have a devastating effect on the millions of low-income women who rely on Medicaid for birth control and other preventive family planning services.
The president’s 2009 budget also proposes to flat-fund America’s family planning program, Title X, despite the fact that it is drastically under-funded. And although the president proposes cutting the overall budget for Health and Human Services, his budget insists on increasing funding for ineffective abstinence-only programs by 24 percent to $141.2 million.
Do we see a trend emerging here? The president’s 2009 budget is backwards. It proposes cuts to the programs most effective in pregnancy prevention, while proposing increases in funding for programs that simply don’t work. At the end of the day, the president's drastic proposal would do nothing more than increase the number of unintended pregnancies and the rate of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The president also proposes cuts to
- the Social Services Block Grants, which helps states achieve a wide range of social policy goals
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs aimed at preventing sexually transmitted infections
- USAID international family planning funding
There is one silver lining — the president’s budget proposes an increase in funding for drug safety activities at the FDA. But it’s hard to gloss over all of the other aspects of the budget that fail to address the public health needs of women, men, and teens.
As the New York Times stated last month, "Prevention works," and the best way to reduce the need for abortions is to "focus on helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies." Now, if only we could get the president to pick up a paper ...