Restore Family Clinics’ Funds, Judge Orders

A judge Thursday ordered the state to restore within 10 days full funding to family planning clinics throughout California, ruling that Gov. George Deukmejian’s two-thirds cut in the $36-million program violated state welfare law by depriving health care to thousands of poor women.

If the judge’s order survives an appeal, it would affect 12 state-aided clinics in Orange County that have had to make severe cutbacks in service because of Deukmejian’s budget slashing.

A preliminary injunction ordering full funding of family planning programs statewide was issued by San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge William Fredman. He stayed the order for 10 days to give the Deukmejian Administration time to appeal. A spokesman for the governor said the state will appeal the ruling.

“As a result of the reduction of funding,” the judge wrote, “thousands of women . . . will lose access to family planning. . . . Thousands of women . . . will be caused to have unintended pregnancies. . . . Depriving poor women of . . . health care will promote ill health and the spread of dangerous diseases resulting in untold suffering.”

The governor’s $24-million cut, made in a budget veto last July, was illegal, the judge ruled, because the law requires the state to provide family planning services to all low-income women who want them.

“The court order reaffirms a fundamental principle: The government can’t deny health care to the poor and the needy, the people it is required to help,” said Joel Diringer, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance, which contested the cuts.

The suit was filed in San Luis Obispo last month by CRLA and another legal aid firm, the Los Angeles-based National Health Law Program, which contended that the budget cuts would result in tens of thousands of unwanted pregnancies and increased incidents of cervical cancer, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases among poor women.

The state will make its appeal to the 2nd District Court of Appeal and ask for an extension of the 10-day stay so that the budget cut would remain in effect, said Tom Beermann, deputy press secretary for Deukmejian.

“We believe that the judge has misread the law and applied his own brand of tortured legal reasoning to reach an incorrect conclusion,” Beermann said.

The funding cuts resulted in the closure of 37 family planning clinics in the state, 17 of them in Los Angeles County. Hundreds of other clinics have curtailed or eliminated a wide array of services, including birth control services, Pap smears to detect cervical cancer, breast exams and tests for sexually transmitted diseases and the AIDS virus.

In Orange County, the Anaheim Counseling Center, which served up to 10,000 women annually, was closed in July because of reduced state assistance. Other family planning agencies in the county have cut back services and staff in the wake of the governor’s funding cut.

The Laguna Beach Community Clinic this year lost three-fourths of its state subsidy for family planning because of the governor’s veto, according to William Plumb, clinic director. Plumb said in November that the clinic would have to start charging, and that if the charges did not cover costs, family planning services might have to be eliminated.

Marty Earlabaugh, director of the Huntington Beach Community Clinic, said in November that his facility also faced a crisis because the clinic lost $200,000 in state funding, nearly one-third of its budget. Several positions had to be eliminated and others reduced to part-time, she said. The clinic also reduced its operating hours from 35 to 28 hours a week.

According to county health officials, as many as 25,000 low-income women in Orange County faced reduced or non-existent care because of the governors’s veto of the funds.

During an Assembly subcommittee hearing in Los Angeles last week, several AIDS researchers predicted that there would be a huge jump in the number of AIDS cases statewide unless the funding was restored.

“These cuts were lunacy,” said Stan Dorn, a staff attorney for National Health Law Program. “They’d greatly increase teen-age pregnancies and ruin thousands of lives. And because of the cuts, it will end up costing the state millions of dollars a year. It makes absolutely no sense.”

Administrators at family planning clinics say that if the state’s appeal is rejected they will begin reopening clinics immediately.

“But a lot of damage has already been done,” said Thomas Kring, director of the Los Angeles Regional Family Planning Council. “We know that because of these cuts a lot of women who needed health care were denied. And most of these women have no other options--they are the poorest of the poor.”

At the time the governor 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 cited a study by researchers at UC San Francisco who concluded that 56,000 additional pregnancies would 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, who had backed Deukmejian’s budget cuts, expressed disappointment Thursday with the judge’s ruling. They contend that family planning clinics promote abortions by providing pregnancy counseling along with other services.

“Any time Planned Parenthood or any other family planning clinics receive taxpayer dollars, we are subsidizing their pro-abortion activities,” said Jan Carroll, associate Western director for the National Right to Life Committee.

But Janice Wolf, program supervisor at Economic Opportunity Commission Family Planning, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said clinics are prohibited by state law from “encouraging or promoting abortion.”

Family planning administrators said the cuts will result in more abortions because of the thousands of additional unwanted pregnancies.

As a result of the cuts, Wolf said, she had to lay off two staff members and reduce the hours at her San Luis Obispo clinic by half. Patients now have to wait up to six weeks for an appointment, and the fee for a routine examination has increased from about $15 to $80.

“We’ve had women with abnormal Pap smears, women worried that they may have cervical cancer, break down and cry because they can’t get appointments until the next month,” Wolf said. “They’re frantic, but there’s nothing we can do.”

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

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles), who has been a leader in the fight to restore the funds, said that Thursday’s action would only strengthen the case of Democratic caucus members opposed to the governor’s stance on family planning.

“This is becoming a terrible political albatross around his neck,” Friedman said. “And it seems to me that he ought to be looking for a way to get back on track with the overwhelming majority of the state on this issue.”

Times staff writers Kenneth J. Garcia in Los Angeles and Bill Billiter in Orange County contributed to this story.