More Health-Care Doors Shut

Doors are shutting in the faces of some 235,000 women in California who will no longer be able to seek health care from family planning clinics. The clinics are closing because last summer Gov. George Deukmejian cut $24 million, or two-thirds, of the state’s family planning budget. The governor and the Legislature couldn’t agree on a budget compromise. If politics is the art of compromise, thousands of women who have nowhere else to turn are now paying the price for an artless state government that let them down.

The severe funding cutbacks will mean that the already burdened system of 500 clinics statewide faces major reductions in family planning counseling and cancer and venereal disease tests. “There’s just no way to get away from the fact that we’re going to have more babies, more cervical cancer and more spreading of venereal disease,” said Catherine J. Wiley, a Los Angeles County family planning official. In Los Angeles County, 13 clinics are expected to close today. That, plus cutbacks at others, could result in 5,000 or more unwanted pregnancies and an alarming increase in undetected gynecological disease; nearly 60,000 women receive medical care at the county’s clinics each year. In Orange County, family planning officials estimate that the cutback will deprive 25,000 women from health care and birth control services. In San Diego, where the county is less dependent on state funds because of local government money, most family planning services will continue but approximately 550 women will be ineligible for breast and cervical cancer screenings.

As more clinics close, many poor women will be redirected to the remaining clinics, only to be placed on a list that already keeps patients waiting as long as two months. Now that waiting list can only expect to grow. And it is not only the poor who will be affected: Planned Parenthood’s typical patient is a white woman in her early 20s who is not pregnant but is employed part time and has no health insurance.

A cutback that so deeply affects people who have no other options is not only cruel but fiscally foolish, since studies have shown that the state would save $11 for every $1 spent on family planning. Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) is planning to hold hearings in Los Angeles this month about the cutbacks. The Legislature also is expected to continue debate on the state’s family planning program when its regular session resumes in January. Until then, unfortunately, it appears that women without insurance who need family planning services or cancer or venereal disease screenings will just have to wait--and hope.