Deukmejian OKs Clerical Error

Your editorial (June 30), “Holes in Our Humanity,” provoked an immediate response. As a health educator at the Family Planning Clinic at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center I am responsible for seeing that each of the 16,000-plus mothers who deliver at our county hospital is given an appointment for a checkup at a county clinic and is made aware of the opportunity to obtain birth control if she wishes.

Most of these 16,000-plus babies born each year at Los Angeles County Hospital are born to Spanish-speaking mothers--many are citizens of other countries, but the babies are U.S. citizens. Most are unplanned and some are unwanted. Some are born to 13- and 14-year-olds; second and third babies to mothers who are still in their teens; a mother delivered her 15th child this past week, a preemie and one that will spend many months in intensive care if it is to survive.

It is humane to provide a good delivery service to these mothers, but it is also humane to be able to offer these same women an effective birth control method so that they can plan when to have their next baby. The clinic at L.A. County-USC Medical Center, where we often see 100 of these mothers a day seeking contraception, provides this service as do other county clinics.

Gov. Deukmejian, through his 1985-86 budget, may not be leaving “a greater gift to our children,” as he states, but rather an extremely burdensome one as he eliminates the funds for family planning services in Los Angeles County clinics that provide a genuinely needed and humane service.

PAT JAMIESON

Sierra Madre