Fund Cuts for Family Planning Challenged

Two legal aid firms announced Wednesday they have filed suit against the state demanding that $24 million slashed from family planning clinics be restored because the cuts violate California welfare law and will prevent many low-income women from receiving health care.

California Rural Legal Assistance and the National Health Law Program contend that the budget cuts will result in tens of thousands of unwanted pregnancies and increased incidents of cervical cancer, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases among poor women.

“These cuts are such an affront because they’re directed at the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society,” said Joel Diringer, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance in San Luis Obispo. “As a result, poor women will be denied the right to reproductive health care that other women have.”

The two public interest law firms filed a motion for a preliminary injunction Wednesday in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court to force the state to rescind the cuts. A hearing on the issue is scheduled Nov. 21. In their lawsuit filed Tuesday, the firms became the first to legally challenge the family planning cuts made by Gov. George Deukmejian in a budget veto last July.

Deukmejian’s slashing of the $36.2-million family planning budget by two-thirds--the maximum allowed by law--has already resulted in the closure of 38 family planning clinics. Other clinics have curtailed or eliminated a wide array of services for low-income women, including birth control services, Pap smears to detect cervical cancer, breast exams and tests for sexually transmitted diseases and the AIDS virus.

The law firms filed the suit on behalf of four plaintiffs: the Economic Opportunity Commission of San Luis Obispo, which sponsors a family planning clinic; two patients at the clinic, and a doctor who works there.

The suit alleges that the cuts violate state welfare law that provides for family planning services to all women who request it. The suit also claims that the cuts are a breach of contract because many of the clinics’ contracts state that their funding level can be reduced only by the Legislature.

Named as defendants in the suit are Kenneth Kizer, director of the state Department of Health Services, and Controller Gray Davis.

Spokesmen for the governor and the Health Services Department said because they have not yet seen copies of the suit, they would not comment.

At the time Deukmejian cut the family planning budget, he suggested that the rising rate of teen-age pregnancy in California indicated that the program had failed.

But the suit cites a study by researchers at UC San Francisco who concluded that 56,000 additional pregnancies will result from this year’s family planning reductions, forcing the state to spend $190 million for Medi-Cal, welfare and other social services.

Anti-abortion activists backed Deukmejian’s budget cuts because they contend that family planning clinics promote abortions by providing pregnancy counseling along with other services.

“These clinics are underwriting the abortion industry. . . ,” said Jan Carroll, associate Western director for the National Right to Life Committee. “They’re giving referrals for abortions. We’re not willing to pay for that.”

But Janice Wolf, program supervisor at EOC Family Planning, one of the plaintiffs, said clinics are prohibited by state law from “encouraging or promoting abortion.” She said the EOC clinic gives pregnant women a sheet of paper that lists adoption services, prenatal care information, welfare services and abortion information.

“The irony about this issue is that now there’s going to be thousands of additional abortions in the state,” Wolf said.

The budget cuts, according to a recent study, will result in about 500 abortions in San Luis Obispo County that would have been prevented with proper contraceptive care, Wolf said.

The state’s more than 500 family planning clinics served 471,000 women last year. But this year, because of the cuts, about 235,000 women will not be able to afford treatment, according to state estimates.

And those women who still visit the clinics will have to wait longer for appointments, Wolf said. At the EOC clinic, patients used to wait about 10 days for an appointment; now they must wait up to a month because of staff layoffs, she said.

Renae Butterfield, another plaintiff in the case, said she can no longer afford regular checkups at the EOC clinic. Butterfield, 25, who works in a gas station mini-market and takes home about $100 a week, said she used to pay about $15 for an examination at the clinic; now the fee is $80.

“I can’t afford to turn over almost my entire paycheck for a visit,” she said. “People who don’t have insurance or make a lot of money just can’t pay what doctors are charging these days. I guess I just won’t be going to the clinic like before. I need the money to live on.”