Family Planning Clinics Closed

With cruel, deft strokes Gov. George Deukmejian has signed off on a policy of punishing poor women that exemplifies his lack of compassion, sensitivity to human rights, common sense and logic (Part A, Oct. 31).

As the family planning clinics targeted for closure begin diverting patients to alternate facilities that are even more crowded and less accessible, the quality of fundamental health-care services provided to needy women will decline dramatically, resulting particularly in increased numbers of unwanted pregnancies, incidences of sexually transmitted diseases and cancer. The health-care professionals have provided the numbers; the reality of the closures is about to be felt throughout Los Angeles County, yet Deukmejian insists on ignoring the facts and supporting his “only slightly” misguided notion that should a program not report a 100% effective rate for one aspect of its function, it therefore does not merit continued funding. To extrapolate his theory, why should we bother with public health care at all; people still get sick.

The final analysis goes like this: Deukmejian, a staunch anti-choice advocate, equates women’s general health services with “the taking of human life.”

It has been noted by several prominent social theorists that increased abuse of women and the status of women, be it rape, battery, denial of equal rights, denigration by the media, and so on, signifies an imminent, large-scale breakdown in the integrity and stability of the social organization within which such abuse occurs.

We may thank George Bush, and, more locally, George Deukmejian, for their extensive contributions to the abuse of women.

MAUREEN SULLIVAN

Los Angeles