The Bush White House on Family Planning
Monday, October 29th, 2007On October 17, Bush appointed Susan Orr, an avowed opponent of contraception (no, not abortion, contraception) to head the Health and Human Services Department’s family-planning office. It may be that I’m just behind the times, but what does family planning mean if not planning how many children to have, and (more or less) when? And how does this work without some form of contraception? This makes me remember the remark of a family friend’s child, the youngest of three, who, upon learning where babies came from, looked at her parents in horror, exclaiming, “You mean you did that three times!?” Well, either Susan Orr is a real spoil-sport and thinks that three times is about right, or she really doesn’t care if we all have two dozen children throughout our child-bearing years. She ought to read a book or two on global population.
And her positions should come as no surprise. In a 2001 article, in the Washington Post, Orr lauded Bush for his proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad spectrum of birth control. She was quoted as saying, “We’re quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease”.
But the goal here is not massive infertility; it is, rather, ensuring that all people of child-bearing age have the information and tools necessary to have children only if and when they want to. This seems to me quite reasonable. It even sounds like the job description of someone in charge of Family Planning for HHS. Could it be that Orr got this application mixed up with the one she was sending the Vatican?
