Clinics Call Axing of Family Planning Funds Disastrous

Three South Bay public clinics are decrying the two-thirds’ cut in state family planning funds made this month by Gov. George Deukmejian that threaten to cripple their services. They hope legislators who support family planning will restore some of the money and stave off cuts in programs that primarily serve poor and low-income women.

“One-third of what we do is family planning, and losing this money would be devastating,” said Alan Terwey, clinic manager of the Harbor Free Clinic in San Pedro. He estimated a loss of $135,000 from the clinic’s $290,000 budget, unless some funds are restored.

Loss of Up to $350,000

The larger South Bay Free Clinic in Manhattan Beach could lose as much as $350,000 of its $1.4 million budget, said development officer Craig A. Vincent-Jones. He said this includes a $170,000 cut in state family planning money, as well as losses in federal and county grants that are tied to the level of that state funding.

Vincent-Jones said the money Deukmejian slashed is “a stable source of income” that supports clinic services other than family planning, such as pediatrics, teen peer counseling and general medicine.

“The analogy we like to use is that, when an earthquake hits a building, it hits the foundation first,” he said. “Then the top falls because the foundation is weak. This is how this money serves us. We build a lot of services because we know we have that money coming in.”

He and other clinic workers said that in many cases the family planning visits are the only medical care some poor women receive.

In signing the 1989-90 state budget July 7, Deukmejian slashed $24 million from the $36-million budget of the state Office of Family Planning. The governor declined to say why he made the cuts.

At a press conference Wednesday, Deukmejian pointed to 77,000 Medi-Cal paid abortions last year in questioning whether “the many, many millions of dollars that have been allocated” for family planning have been effectively spent. He also said he does not believe there is “a tremendous amount of support” among legislators for “a lot of these family planning agencies.”

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), an abortion opponent, has said that the family planning program brought the loss of funds on itself, claiming that the clinics have encouraged abortions.

Family planning advocates reject that view, saying they are prevented by law from recommending abortion and arguing, instead, that birth control--the primary family planning goal--actually reduces abortions.

Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown (D-San Francisco) has made full restoration of family planning funds “his top priority,” according to Ken Tiratira, assistant to the Speaker for health and human services.

‘Bargaining Chip’

He said Deukmejian wants the Legislature to provide $157 million for programs he favors, including tourism and transportation, “and this could be used as a bargaining chip” in current negotiations between the governor and legislators to get family planning money back in the state budget.

At the press conference, Deukmejian said that although he has met with Brown and other legislative leaders to discuss the budget, he does not plan to reinstate the funds for family planning. However, he said some additional services might be provided by restructuring the family service program.

According to South Bay clinics, family planning programs distribute contraceptives, offer pregnancy testing, and provide educational information and counseling on birth control. They also give full physical examinations to clients, screening them for such things as sexually transmitted diseases and cancer. Referrals are made for abortions, prenatal care and adoptions, but choosing those services is up to the patients, the clinics say.

“We do not provide abortions and we are prohibited from recommending abortion,” said Shirley Smith, director of the Women’s Health Care Clinic at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance. The clinic provides family planning services.

Impact on Poor People

Family planning partisans argue that it is shortsighted and callous to cut family planning money in light of the abortion controversy and the limited opportunities poor people have for medical care.

“This is the only medical care for many of these patients,” Smith said, explaining that clinic patients are poor women who have not had a lot of medical care and come in with undiagnosed problems that are detected by the physical examinations they receive.

Said Vincent-Jones, “A real important point is that family planning money provides general health care for a lot of people.”

On the abortion issue, both he and Smith contend that family planning prevents pregnancies that otherwise might lead to abortions. “Wherever you stand on choice,” said Vincent-Jones, “family planning is still a good method to prevent the need for abortion.”

Pregnancy Prevention

Smith said that when the governor used 77,000 abortions to question the effectiveness of family planning, “he made no mention of the pregnancies we prevented, the abortions we prevented by being there with contraceptive supplies.”

During the past fiscal year, the South Bay clinic provided family planning services to about 20,000 clients, more than 2,000 were seen at the Harbor clinic and more than 1,200 a month at Harbor-UCLA.

Officials of the Wilmington Free Clinic, the South Bay’s other public clinic, could not be reached for comment.

The exact amount that each program will lose has not been determined because a family planning fund distribution formula is still being worked out in Sacramento, according to the Los Angeles Regional Family Planning Council, an agency that distributes state and federal family planning money to local agencies and monitors their programs.

Meanwhile, local clinics are girding for cuts in programs, staff and hours of operation in anticipation of a financial loss in August. The South Bay and Harbor free clinics are attempting to round up political support and local donations to take up some of the financial slack.

Said Smith, “The patients are the biggest losers because they have no other locations to turn to.”