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IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM THE MISSOURI FAMILY HEALTH COUNCIL
posted on 7/31/2008

Proposed Regulations Undermine Access to Family Planning

The Bush Administration is circulating a draft of proposed Health and Human Services regulations that would disrupt the Title X program, our nation’s only program dedicated to providing both education and contraceptive services and to the low-income and uninsured. These changes could bypass state laws that protect women’s access to basic reproductive health care and significantly undermine the ability of American women to access contraceptive services, including birth control pills, IUDs and emergency contraception.

Currently, low-income and uninsured women and men who enter a government-funded health care facility to receive family planning services do so with the knowledge and expectation that they will receive access to the full range of comprehensive family planning and contraceptive services available. These proposed rules could mean that providers of federally-funded family planning services could no longer guarantee their patients access to the full range of services.

If implemented, the regulations could mean that women may no longer be able to rely on getting full information and common contraceptive methods from Title X providers, since the regulations could force Title X providers to hire employees who refuse to do their job. The regulations could require scarce federal family planning dollars to be given to organizations that are unwilling to provide women with information and/or contraceptive services. Also, women could lose the protection of state laws that expand access to basic reproductive health care by changing these laws altogether.

These proposed regulations could jeopardize federal programs such as the Title X program and Medicaid that provide family planning services to millions of women and men. The impact of these new regulations would be to severely limit access to counseling, education, preventive health services and contraception for those who need it most, low-income and uninsured women and men.

The Missouri Family Health Council is aware of this situation. We are monitoring it very closely and will keep you informed of any changes or decisions that are made.



For more details about the proposed regulations, click on this link: