Womens Rights and Funding for Family Planning at the National and State Levels

The debate over whether women actually need any special legal protections beyond those enumerated in the U.S. Constitution as well as proper funding levels for family planning needs has been a source of concern among policymakers at the state and federal levels for decades. State-level proponents of increased federal funding cite the continuing disparities in earning between male and female workers in the United States, but they also argue that additional family planning is an absolute necessity in order to address this broad-based problem because of the additional burdens that unplanned children place disproportionately on American women, most especially those who are already struggling to survive below the national poverty level despite working at a full-time minimum wage job. Conversely, national policymakers maintain that simply throwing more money at the problem without other social programs and incentives is a waste of scarce taxpayer resources and the states should do more if they feel it is needed. Against this backdrop, it is important to identify the antecedents of this policy relationship in order to formulate optimal strategies for the future. To this end, this paper reviews the relevant juried literature together with reliable supplementary resources to describe the major issues facing the U.S. and Texas governments with respect to womens rights and funding for family planning followed by an analysis concerning the most salient reasons for initiating changes to the existing policy. In addition, a description of the options that must be considered together with an assessment of their respective pros and cons are followed by a discussion concerning the optimal option for the future. Finally, a summary of the research and the key findings that emerged from the peer-reviewed and supplementary literature concerning these issues are provided in the papers conclusion.

From a strictly pragmatic perspective, the major issues facing state governments include the need to receive more federal money than states pay the U.S. government. For instance, Scarboro points out that, State-level taxes may be the most visible source of state government revenues for most taxpayers, but its important to remember that they are not the only source of state revenue. State governments also receive a significant amount of assistance from the federal government (2). Moreover, some states such as Mississippi consistently receive far more federal money than other sometimes-donor states such as Texas, making this a highly disputatious issue at the state and federal levels. For example, studies sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation have determined that, The federal government pays 90% of all family planning services and supplies, and states pay 10%. This is considerably higher than the federal match that states receive for most other services, which ranges from 50% to 78%, depending on the state (Ranji, Salganicoff and Sobel 4).

Because the type of initiative or capital investment projects that are involved in states securing federal funding have a major effect on their approval, controversial issues such as womens rights and funding for family planning naturally stand a lesser chance of succeeding in obtaining federal funding, especially if states have significantly different laws and regulations on their books in these areas compared to the national government. As Bailey emphasizes, Family planning policies (i.e., those increasing legal or financial access to modern contraceptives and related education and medical services), have grown increasingly controversial over the last decade (343).

The origins of the current controversy over federal support for womens reproductive rights and funding for family planning, though, date back to the mid-20th century. Some evidence in support of this timeline can be discerned form an early debate over federal and state funding levels for family planning, with some states attempting to apply what can only be described as social engineering to the problem. For example, according to Welch, In the 1960s, calls for women's reproductive rights swelled, birth-control advocates demanded that poorer women be granted greater access to contraception. But these demands were tailored to the federal government's growing focus on fighting poverty and a national perception that overpopulation had become a problem, rather than speaking the language of women's rights (221). In sum, despite the purported intentioned goals of federal funding for family planning, state-level policymakers and even federal lawmakers from such states have consistently attempted to subvert the process to the detriment of the intended lower-income female beneficiaries of these programs. Indeed, according to Welch, during the 1960s:

Expanded access to birth control was essential to limiting the numbers of poor people. Arkansas's example illustrates how, historically, choices about whether and when to have children have been inextricably linked to women's economic situation and how birth control initiatives were often justified as instruments of control rather than individual self-determination. (223)

Given that individual self-determination is at the heart of womens reproductive rights, the rationale behind the bipartisan support of federal funding for family lanning during the 1960s must be regarded as the results of a cold-blooded cost-benefits analysis that ignored these fundamental rights in an effort to reduce the more expensive long-term costs of welfare caused by unplanned pregnancies. In this regard, Welch reports that there was widespread bipartisan support for family planning funding by the federal government during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations for this very reason: In the 1960s, both Democrats and Republicans supported federally funded family planning, hoping to contain rising welfare costs (244). As discussed further below, even federal policymakers from states such as Texas were advocating federal funding for family planning specifically to reduce the welfare burden imposed by lower-income women, most especially minorities. As then-Republican congressman George H. W. Bush of Texas pointed at the time, Our national welfare costs are rising phenomenally [and] that [blacks] cannot hope to acquire a larger share of American prosperity without cutting down on births" (as cited in Welch 224).

These policy changes were regarded as being absolutely essential to the nations future since the percentage of recipients of public welfare assistance had increased significant in the preceding years following the amendment of the Aid to Dependent Children initiative in 1961 to include two-parent families at which point the legislation was renamed the Aid to Family with Dependent Children (Welch 225). This single policy change resulted in a dramatic increase in the numbers of federal welfare recipients. In fact, the number of federal public assistance recipients nearly doubled from 4.3 million...…services or appropriately bill for them. The policy means that states cannot bar providers from the program simply because they provide abortion services (Ranji et al. 6).

The key disadvantage to this option the fact that the VA is already experiencing greater demand for health care services from the existing veteran population it serves than it can handle, and critics are increasingly calling for the privatization of these health care services.

There are also pros and cons to the final option, retaining the status quo. The main advantage of this option would be the continuation of the best parts of federalism that have contributed to the increased well-being of millions of American women and children over the years. In addition, the nationwide network of safety-net clinics and providers is already in place and has significant experience in helping the marginalized populations they serve. The overarching disadvantage of this option is the inevitability of the application of state-level policies that gut the effectiveness of these programs to the point where states such as Texas even refuse to accept the tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid money that are targeted for these initiatives.

Taken together, it is reasonable to suggest that identifying the optimal option for moving forward is a daunting enterprise, but of the three discussed above, option two, transferring these responsibilities to the VA, represents a viable alternative. While this novel solution may appear suboptimal, there are several factors involved that make it a suitable option. For example, the VA already operates the nations largest health care network, comprised of more than 150 tertiary medical centers and thousands of outpatient clinics in every state. All of these facilities also offer family planning services for eligible male and female veterans so they are well situated to extend these services to females in need of such family planning resources. Moreover, these healthcare facilities are also accessible to the low-income, inner-city women who are at greatest risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease as well as having an abortion due to unintended pregnancies.

In the final analysis, it is easy to get lost in the sea of acronyms that refer to the steady stream of federal legislation over the past 50 years that have been intended to promote family planning at the state level and lose sight of the real problem in the process. The research was consistent in showing that federal funding for womens reproductive rights and family planning has made a substantive difference in the lives of millions of women over the years, most especially lower-income women whose lives had been adversely affected by unplanned pregnancies.

The truly baffling issue that emerged from the research was the divergence of policy positions between Republicans and Democrats over the past decade is reflective of the problems that are involved in effecting meaningful change when there are perceived moral issues involved. In some states such as Texas, lawmakers appear more concerned about being morally correct than they are about womens fundamental rights and their health. Certainly, the federal government cannot force states to accept federal money and use it for family planning if they refuse it, but the federal government can make family planning services available through its…