BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A low-income person's access to birth control shouldn't be limited by somebody else's views of morality, I suggested in a recent column.
Readers quickly weighed in. Some said they didn't want to pay for anyone else's lack of morality. Others said family planning is an important service of public health clinics.
"I'm a certified nurse midwife at University Hospital as well as with my father's practice in Northern Kentucky," said Sara Ferguson of Union. "I'm working so hard to help poor women in both Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati have access to birth control services, and it needs to continue."
My column had addressed a demand from Northern Kentucky Right to Life that the Independent District Health Department reject a $250,000 federal grant to provide family planning services to low-income people. The grant covers distribution of contraceptives, some of which have an abortive effect on fertilized eggs, the group argued.
Right to Life President Robert Cetrulo also says that minors shouldn't be given contraception without their parents' consent, and that birth control can increase abortions by encouraging promiscuity. I interviewed several couples at the district's Covington clinic who didn't seem to fit the scenario. One had gotten pregnant at 15 -- when she wasn't using birth control -- but decided to have her baby anyway. Another woman, married, said she tried birth control without success and also chose to have her children.
Through e-mail, Elise Seibt of Covington offered this:
"As a lifelong Catholic, I am "supposed' to be allied with Mr. Cetrulo. But as a nurse with many years of experience in obstetrics, I know there are other sides. . . . There are women and men, both married and single, who desperately need access to affordable birth control. I applaud the couple who are sensible enough to know they cannot, for whatever reason, support another child. I applaud young women who take responsibility for birth control after making the decision to have sex.
"I may not agree with their choices, but I agree with their responsibility. And I don't have a problem with my tax dollars supporting these services." Helen Kanitz of Hyde Park thinks I oversimplified Mr. Cetrulo's statements about the link between birth control, promiscuity and abortions. He didn't mean to say that birth control always leads to promiscuity which always leads to abortions, but that this sometimes happens, Ms. Kanitz says.
"How clever (and deceptive) of you to leave out these important distinctions. Please limit your future Enquirer articles to subjects on which you have a complete understanding and leave your personal emotions out of them. Better yet I would suggest a complete change of career -- that would certainly benefit the Enquirer and its readership." Bill Scheyer of Florence had a different view.
"Your hands-on approach of actually going out and talking to real people instead of simply accepting Mr. Cetrulo's "right' to tell all of the rest of us how God wants us to live was very refreshing," he wrote. "Do you think we could rally open-minded moderates in Northern Kentucky?"
And finally, Bill Plummer of Edgewood had this to say about Right to Life:
"I can see the logic which leads them to take the stand they do. You can always find anecdotal evidence, as you did, to counter a general argument, and I certainly would not support any blanket opposition to birth control pills based on their logic.
"However, two points which I feel very strongly about . . . I feel no obligation to subsidize or provide these birth control pills so someone can do things which offend my view of morality. Let them do what they want, as long as they pay for it (in every sense of the word).
"No. 2: Do you really believe that if the $250,000 grant was cut off, the clinic would not or could not find another way to accomplish their purpose? Uncle Sucker is just the easiest place to get the dough. The federal government should not be in this kind of business." The health district, incidentally, has not rejected the grant and will continue providing contraception to low-income people. In deference to Right to Life, however, the district's clinics will not be providing so-called emergency contraception -- essentially a heavy dose of birth-control pills taken after intercourse. Women who request this service will be referred to Planned Parenthood in Cincinnati.
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email
her at ksamples@enquirer.com
SAMPLES ARCHIVE