Officials Seek to Ban Type of Birth Control

In a move that effectively would circumvent state and federal law, a conservative bloc of San Bernardino County supervisors has voted to seek a ban on morning-after contraceptive pills in county-run health clinics.

The supervisors--who said they acted out of concern that the pills can be given to minors--need federal approval to put the plan into effect, however. The request, the first of its kind by a local government in California, would present the Bush administration with a delicate and important test.

The dispute is part of a new front in the nation’s abortion wars, moving the debate from the national to the local level and from surgical abortion to alternative ways to prevent birth. Though the Clinton administration made morning-after pills available in 1999, conservative groups--viewing them as a form of abortion--have sought to repeal that approval.

“We think it is very important, what they are asking for,” said Jenny Biondi, executive director of the Pasadena-based Right to Life League of Southern California. “Why should government money be used to fund mini-abortions?”

San Bernardino County supervisors will ask the federal government for a waiver allowing the county to stop distributing the pill from its clinics while continuing to receive about $450,000 in family planning grants.

Though the county’s appeal will land first at the California Family Health Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that distributes the money, it’s likely to wind its way to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

That would put the final decision in the lap of the Bush administration, which has already blocked funding for overseas family planning groups that promote or perform abortions and strongly backs local government control.

“It’s possible that there could be a change of philosophy” in Washington, allowing the county to stop offering the pills, said San Bernardino County Health Director Dr. Tom Prendergast. “Those are the waters we’re going to test.”

The proposal puts the county at odds with California law, which gives teenagers of reproductive age access to birth control, and federal law, which requires that government agencies receiving family planning grant money use some of it to dispense morning-after pills--unless they have a waiver.

Health officials and women’s rights supporters across California have condemned the move as dangerous and shortsighted. The irony of the decision, they point out, is that blocking the distribution of the pills could increase the number of abortions that are performed in San Bernardino County--hardly the goal of the officials behind the plan.

“It prevents abortions. It doesn’t provide abortions,” said Jon Dunn, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties. “So I think it’s really a shame what the supervisors are doing. I think it would be a disservice to the women of San Bernardino County.”

Although officials who back the plan say they were motivated by concern that the pills are available to young teenagers, county figures suggest that few are distributed to minors. Last year, no 12-year-olds, one 13-year-old and four 14-year-olds were given the pills in San Bernardino County.

About three-quarters of the 643 pills distributed by the county in 2000 went not to teenagers, but to poor adult women without insurance or access to family planning counseling, health officials say.

San Bernardino County blossomed in the last two decades as a bedroom community of the Los Angeles area, and has always had a conservative edge. But it has many urban areas, especially in the city of San Bernardino, that are dominated by diverse, blue-collar neighborhoods.

At issue are emergency contraceptive pills. Unlike RU-486, which expels the fetus, the pills--heavy doses of standard birth-control pills--prevent the fertilized egg from being implanted.

As in the rest of the nation, they are distributed along with other forms of contraception, such as condoms. They are available at 10 government clinics in San Bernardino County.

Though some critics consider the pill a form of abortion, women’s rights supporters say the pill will prevent 1.7 million unplanned pregnancies this year--and subsequently, 800,000 abortions. The American Medical Assn. has urged the FDA to make them available over the counter, as they are in Britain and France.

The proposed ban “doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Dr. Ron Bangesser, a family physician in Redlands and a member of the California Medical Assn Board of Trustees.

“Having a morning-after pill helps to reduce unwanted pregnancies, reduce the number of abortions, reduce the risk of those abortions, reduce the risk of child abuse with unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children,” he said. “I think there are many better ways of trying to get a message across than eliminating the morning-after pill. . . . We need to keep politics out of patient care.”

San Bernardino County has received federal grants for family planning for years, and the continuation of the program last month was considered routine--until Supervisor Bill Postmus learned that the pills are available to teenagers under federal law.

Last Tuesday, after learning that they could not require parental consent before dispensing the pills to teenagers, the supervisors voted 4 to 1 to ask for the waiver. The supervisors voting in the majority are Republicans. Two of them, including Postmus--who did not return phone calls Monday seeking comment--are outspoken conservatives on social issues.

Another who voted to seek the waiver, Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, said he doesn’t oppose the pill but wants the right to tailor family planning services to the community by better connecting teenage patients with their parents.

“I just think that it requires some more localized, intimate management than something that was delivered on high from the federal government,” he said.

Other agencies that receive grant money have asked the federal government to tweak their family planning campaigns in the past, but all have presented scientific evidence that certain programs are unnecessary, said Margie Fites Seigle, chief executive of the California Family Health Council.

“This situation is, on face value, different,” Seigle said. “My basic concern is that it would limit access to a birth control method, and therefore limit access to the health care system for women in their community.”

Supervisor Jerry Eaves, the lone Democrat on the board and the lone opposition vote, said it is not the role of a local government body to create reproductive law.

“I don’t think it’s responsible,” Eaves said. “This is criterion that state and federal laws have set up. If they don’t like it, they ought to go change the state or federal law.”

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Jerry Eaves is also referred to as Gerald Eaves or Gerald R. Eaves in other Los Angeles Times stories.

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