Legislators Map Strategy to Save County Clinics

Leaders from about half a dozen pro-choice groups were joined by several politicians in protesting the closure Wednesday of 13 family planning clinics operated by Los Angeles County.

Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Tarzana) said state Democratic legislative leaders would continue to target Gov. George Deukmejian’s work plan for prison inmates as a bargaining chip in their efforts to replace the $24 million Deukmejian slashed from the family planning budget this summer.

“Of all the cuts the governor made, the worst and most indefensible (are) the cuts to family planning,” Friedman said at a news conference outside the Culver Health Center in Culver City, one of the 13 county programs that shut down Wednesday.

Democratic leaders have already blocked funding once for the governor’s proposed program, which would allow private firms to contract with the Department of Corrections to hire prison inmates, after Deukmejian cut the family planning budget by two-thirds, the maximum allowed by law. Friedman said the work-plan funds would again be targeted during the next legislative session, which begins in January, unless the governor agrees to restore money for the clinics.

Tom Beermann, Deukmejian’s deputy press secretary, said Wednesday that the governor has indicated a willingness to work with the Legislature on both the prison labor and family planning programs and expects them to work out their differences in the next session.

Friedman said he will hold a special hearing of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Health and Welfare at Los Angeles City Hall on Nov. 30 to discuss the funding cuts. Friedman was joined at the news conference by Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who said she will ask House Speaker Willie Brown to consider blocking emergency Bay Area earthquake-relief funds unless the family planning money is restored.

“He (Deukmejian), as a matter of fact, caused an earthquake here with the demolition of family planning funds,” Waters said.

Family planning program directors and county health officials have said the clinic closures, which were carried out Wednesday, would have dire consequences for thousands of poor, uninsured women who use the programs. They have predicted that the action could result in 5,000 or more unwanted pregnancies and an alarming increase in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The increase in pregnancies, they said, will drive an increasing number of women to seek abortions at other facilities.

The county’s 42 clinics provide gynecological exams, Pap smears, pregnancy counseling, birth control and testing for venereal disease to nearly 60,000 women each year. County health officials have said closure of 13 programs will mean that some women will have to wait more than two months to get an appointment at the other 29 clinics.

Marie Paris, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles, said her agency is already feeling the effects of the clinic closures.

“We’re just completely swamped, and we’re getting lots of referrals, but we won’t turn anyone away,” she said.