Contact: Lindsay Randall, Concerned Women for America, 202-488-7000 ext. 105
WASHINGTON, July 31 /Christian Newswire/ -- Concerned Women for America (CWA) opposes the Guttmacher Institute’s recommendation for public funding of contraceptive services and supplies for teenagers and women in poverty.
Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, Senior Fellow of CWA’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, said, “The headline of the latest report from the Guttmacher Institute, the think tank for Planned Parenthood, focuses on poor women, but they also include teenagers--‘young women under age 20.’”
Crouse explained, “In effect, Planned Parenthood is trying to get around parents to provide contraception for teenagers and to provide a rationale--no matter how flimsy--for the federal government to give more federal grants to Planned Parenthood. Moreover, the public has a right to know that Planned Parenthood’s idea of contraceptive services includes abortion and they are the largest abortion provider in the nation.”
The Guttmacher Institute claims that a little over 17 million women of reproductive age in the United States “need” publicly funded contraceptive services and supplies because they are sexually active and don’t want to have children. But according to Crouse, “A woman with a salary of more than $24,000-$38,000 would be eligible to receive tax-payer funded contraceptive supplies and services under Guttmacher’s plan. Most people would hardly think such incomes warrant federal subsidies for personal items –– not to mention their opposition to federal funding for abortions.”
Crouse also noted, “Equally important, many in the public do not believe that unmarried young girls should be encouraged to be sexually active by receiving contraceptives funded by tax dollars.”
“Social trends toward mother-only households are more a driving force to poverty than are the ‘economic factors’ that Guttmacher blames but does not identify. The truth is that being an unmarried mother is the major reason that women end up in poverty and mother-only households have increased dramatically. Nevertheless, a result of the 1996 Welfare Reform legislation was that the number of women in poverty in 2004 was still more than 500 thousand lower than the peak number in 1993,” concluded Crouse.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.
