Dictating to Doctors

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Jack F. Kemp (R-N.Y.) have launched a legislative attempt to tell some doctors what they may and may not tell some patients. Because their target is abortion counseling, there is grave danger that success would undermine a sound national program of family planning. They want to deny federal funds to agencies such as Planned Parenthood Federation clinics or hospitals that are doing their job by telling women all their options.

The House Appropriations Committee is now considering the reauthorization of the federal family planning program, known as Title X. Kemp has proposed the amendment that would cut off federal funds. Meantime, Hatch is blocking movement of the reauthorization on the Senate side. This program provided services to 5 million women in 1983. Most of them were young women of low income who had no children. California would be especially affected by any cut in federal funds because it has a strong network of family planning services. That should be of particular concern to the five Californians on the Appropriations Committee: Democratic Reps. Edward R. Roybal of Los Angeles, Julian C. Dixon of Culver City and Vic Fazio of West Sacramento and Republican Reps. Jerry Lewis of San Bernardino and Bill Lowery of San Diego.

Support for those programs has always been broad and bipartisan. Title X was signed in 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon. One of its original co-sponsors was Vice President George Bush, then a member of the House. Among its most vocal defenders now are Republican Sens. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut and Bob Packwood of Oregon along with Democrats Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio and Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles.

Support for federal family planning efforts is also strong in much of the medical community, in which one spokesman sees the Kemp amendment as “an unwarranted intrusion in the practice of quality medical care.” Dr. Harold A. Kaminetzky, a top official with the 25,000-member American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, has written Rep. Jamie L. Whitten (D-Miss.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, vigorously opposing the amendment.

Doctors counseling women with unintended pregnancies are supposed to advise them about all options: having the child and raising it themselves, having the child and placing it for adoption or having an abortion, Kaminetzky said. Doctors also counsel that for the future, abortion is not recommended as the preferred method of birth control. His organization has found no evidence that family planning organizations are misusing federal funds, and he argues that the proposed restrictions “may place physicians in legal jeopardy for failure to fully inform the patient of her medical alternatives. The quality of care is seriously hampered under such conditions.”

Last year anti-abortion groups were successful in cutting off public support for the International Planned Parenthood Federation. That was a callous, short-sighted move that only increases anguish and adversity among women abroad who depended on those services. The anti-abortion forces won that fight; they must not win this one.