Anti-Birth Control Appointee Is a Bad Choice

[shadowkatt]

Bush has just appointed a highly criticized, anti-contraception person to be the new cheif of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Here are some news clips that criticize this appointment:

• "The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as "demeaning to women..." Read the rest of this article

• "EVERYBODY makes mistakes. Doctors, even excellent ones, are not exempt. But a physician who consistently promotes false data so as to influence patients' gravest personal decisions falls far outside the norm. This month, the Bush administration placed just such a doctor in a position of enormous power to affect the health of 5 million Americans. The choice is absurd and irresponsible..." Read the rest of this article

• "You would have to search far and wide to find someone more ardently opposed to birth control and other women's rights than Dr. Eric Keroack, for whom any sex education beyond abstinence counseling is a no-no. As medical director for A Woman's Concern, an extremist group of pregnancy health centers in Boston, he supports their decree that the manufacture and distribution of birth control is 'demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.'" Read the rest of this article

• "This month the president named, to head the federal office overseeing family planning programs, the former medical director of a nonprofit group that believes birth control is wrong. No, that isn't a joke. A Woman's Concern, a Massachusetts chain of anti-abortion, pregnancy counseling centers, states in online materials that the 'distribution of birth control is demeaning to women (and) adverse to human health and happiness.' AWC also believes birth control increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion." Read the rest of this article

• "The antidote to stem our state's runaway teen pregnancy rate and reduce our abortion rate is comprehensive sex education and access to birth control. Dr. Keroack's ideologically based "medicine" of withholding information and contraception from women is yet another example of this administration's willingness to promote politics over sound science. Suffice it to say, this appointment will be a disaster for women in Florida and the nation." Read the rest of this editorial

• "On Monday, the federal office that oversees the nation's family-planning program got a new boss who doesn't believe in birth control. Eric Keroack is a Massachusetts obstetrician-gynecologist who argues that abstinence until marriage is the only healthy choice for women. Until recently, he served as medical director of a pregnancy-counseling organization that runs down contraception and gives out scientifically false health information, for instance, that condoms 'offer virtually no protection' against herpes or HPV. Keroack also promotes a wacky piece of pseudoscience: the claim that premarital sex disrupts brain chemistry so as to create a physiological barrier to happy marriage." Read the rest of this article

• "'Less than two weeks ago the American public made it clear that they want a middle ground approach to our nation's most pressing problems,' Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. 'Unfortunately, this appointment says loudly and clearly that the president simply did not get that message.'" Read the rest of this article

Those are just a few articles/editorials on this, but there are plenty of others.

Also, Keroack is not even currently a certified obstetrician-gynecologist; he let his certification expire!

• "Pearson also acknowledged yesterday that Keroack is not currently certified as an obstetrician-gynecologist. That is not a requirement for the job, but HHS officials had cited Keroack's expertise in defending his selection." Read the rest of this article

Take Action!

You can send a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, urging him to reject this appointment through any or all of these groups (and of course, you can always write your own and send it to him as well):

• Planned Parenthood
• National Orgainization for Women
• NARAL Pro-Choice America

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