Press Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 7, 2007

Contact: Matt Sande, Director of Legislation, cell: (262) 352-0890
or Marc Tuttle, Communications Director, (262) 796-1111, cell: (262) 408-0506.

Budget Committee to Vote on Expanding Confidential
Family Planning Program for Teens
Governor’s budget proposal undermines parents, says Pro-Life Wisconsin

Madison – The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on Governor Doyle’s budget proposal to expand the state’s Medicaid Family Planning Demonstration Project to include 15, 16, 17-year-old boys. The project currently provides free, taxpayer-funded birth control to teen girls of similar age without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Federal and state law prohibits parents from being notified that their minor daughters are receiving free contraceptives under this demonstration project.

“Providing free, taxpayer-funded birth control to 15-year-old boys and girls behind parents’ backs is irresponsible public policy, and we urge the finance committee to block expansion of this offensive project,” said Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “Parents are naturally concerned about the sexual health of their teen children, not only to protect them physically but to guide them morally. If anything, the state should reinforce the parent-child relationship, not undermine it. Who do we want to be the confidants of our sons and daughters – parents, or Planned Parenthood? That is the question all parents in this state should be asking themselves,” said Hamill.

The Family Planning Demonstration Project currently provides “family planning” services and supplies for low-income women ages 15 through 44. Women applying for the program are considered presumptively eligible and therefore may receive services immediately with no co-payment. For minors family income is disregarded as an eligibility factor so virtually every teen girl in the state is financially eligible. Seven states – Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Alabama, New Mexico, and Louisiana – prevent minor girls from enrolling in their respective family planning waiver programs, limiting them to women who are at least 19 years of age. The Governor’s budget proposal expands the Family Planning Demonstration Project to men aged 15-44 and expands program eligibility by increasing the income limit from 185 percent to 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

Compelling data indicates that broad contraceptive availability may actually work to increase underage pregnancy and abortion by encouraging sexual promiscuity, debunking Planned Parenthood’s theory that the provision of contraceptives to teens will reduce underage pregnancies. A March 2002 study published in the Journal of Health Economics investigated the impact of family planning on teenage conceptions and abortions by testing data from 16 United Kingdom regions over a 14-year period. The author of the study concluded that “the overall effect of expanding family planning services for under-16s has been to increase pregnancies and abortion.”

“It is becoming increasingly clear that the availability of confidential ‘family planning’ services to teens is encouraging sexual promiscuity and with it a host of social pathologies,” said Matt Sande, Pro-Life Wisconsin’s legislative director. “Protecting teenage boys and girls from the devastating physical and emotional effects of STDs, pregnancy and abortion, as well as ensuring the rights of parents to be involved in such important issues in their children’s lives is our moral and civic duty,” said Sande.

Pro-Life Wisconsin doubts the estimated cost savings to the State of Wisconsin that the Department of Health and Family Services (DHFS) attributes to the Medicaid Family Planning Demonstration Project. The Department contends that provision of contraceptive services to teens reduces Medicaid-funded pregnancies. However, the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) states in their budget paper that “estimates of program costs and savings must be based on a number of behavioral assumptions that cannot be reliably predicted” and that “all of the costs and savings relating to this proposal are speculative.”

Furthermore, states operating programs under federal Medicaid waivers must demonstrate to CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) that they are “budget neutral,” or that the costs of providing family planning services do not exceed expected savings. States are required to submit reports to CMS demonstrating compliance with budget neutrality provisions. According to the LFB, DHFS has only submitted one report to CMS since the program’s inception in 2003. The LFB states in their budget paper that “since the [one] report only identifies program activity for the first year of the project, it is not possible to draw conclusions from the report on the cost effectiveness of the current program.”

“If the current program cannot be cost justified, then certainly the state should not expend more tax dollars to expand it,” said Sande.

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