Thursday, November 29, 2007
Editorial: A birth control makeup test
Congress gets an 'F' for allowing deep discounts for contraceptives to slip away from campus clinics. Lawmakers need to fix the damage.
From the RoundTable blog
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A glitch in the federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 has caused a spike in the cost of contraceptives at college and university health centers and hundreds of community clinics across the country that serve the poor.
The Bush administration could easily set things right by clarifying the rules for clinics that are able to buy the drugs at deep discounts from manufacturers. But, despite pleas from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services failed to act earlier this year when it had a chance.
Congress can fix the technical oversight that has created the problem, though, and should -- quickly.
Women experiencing the presumably temporary impoverishment of college life and women working on the low rungs of the pay ladder risk being trapped in poverty and dependency by an unwanted pregnancy. They need ready access to birth control they can afford.
Sexual abstinence, of course, is absolutely free of charge and absolutely safe in terms of avoiding pregnancy. But presuming that most adults who might be wise to remain abstinent will make that choice is not a safe bet for the innocent children who could be born to accidental parents -- or for society.
Some Democrats in Congress are hoping to pass a bill this year that would restore access to deeply discounted prices for prescription contraceptives to university-based clinics and the so-called safety-net clinics that serve the poor yet were cut out. That would simply correct what some lawmakers from both parties have said was an inadvertent change when they tinkered with the Medicaid law.
If this were a simple matter, though, the error would have been corrected months ago. Instead, the problem seems to have settled into the bog of politics now surrounding birth control, as abstinence-only advocates criticize the whole idea of making contraception inexpensive and easy to get.
Nevertheless, legislation to fix the glitch has been introduced in both the Senate and the House, where, reproductive-rights advocates say, Virginia's Ninth District Rep. Rick Boucher has been a helpful supporter.
If it passes, supporters fear President Bush would veto it, though he has not addressed the issue specifically. They hope to attach the change to some bill the president is sure to sign.
One way or the other, the revision needs to become law. Keeping effective contraception accessible to college students and to the poor should be a priority in Washington.
