Dear Member of Congress:
The undersigned organizations are writing to ask that you include the Title X national family planning program among your list of funding priorities for FY 2005 and request that it be funded at $350 million.
The national family planning program is a public health success story. Title X clinics have long been a vital part of our nation's public health infrastructure, providing high-quality family planning services and other preventive health care to low-income individuals who would otherwise lack access to health care. By law, Title X may not fund abortion. Title X services prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the number of abortions, lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV, and improve women's health. For every public dollar invested in family planning, three dollars are saved in Medicaid costs for pregnancy and newborn care alone.
Each year, Title X services enable Americans to prevent approximately one million unintended pregnancies, nearly half of which would end in abortion. Title X-supported clinics play a crucial role in providing STD-related services; each year, one in five women of reproductive age who obtains testing or treatment for STDs does so at a Title X-funded clinic, and 14 percent of HIV tests performed on women are performed in a Title X-funded clinic. In calendar year 2002 alone, Title X-funded clinics provided 5.2 million STD tests, 494,000 HIV tests, and three million Pap tests.
But Title X agencies are being stretched to the breaking point. Health care inflation has far outstripped funding for Title X clinic services, which have been further strapped as a result of new and expensive contraceptive technologies, improved and expensive screening and treatment for cervical cancer and STDs and the expense of training and retaining qualified health care personnel in an era of nursing shortages. In addition, state fiscal crises have reduced other sources of funding for family planning services, leaving Title X clinics to address the growing demand for subsidized family planning services without corresponding increases in funding. In fact, had funding for Title X kept pace with medical inflation since FY 1980, it would now be funded at $643 million instead of the FY 2004 level of $278 million.
Funding shortages have grown dramatically despite certain incontrovertible facts: Contraception is not controversial for the vast majority of Americans, rather it is basic, cost-effective health care that allows women to plan and space their families; many STDs are treatable and curable; and cervical cancer is preventable, treatable and curable with appropriate screening and treatment. Although family planning opponents inexplicably argue that Title X is a ""comprehensive sex ed program,"" the reality is that Title X is, first and foremost, a program dedicated to providing preventive medical services to low income Americans. These health services include the following:
Despite the litany of primary health care services provided at Title X agencies, the President's budget proposes to flat-fund the program. We urge you to request $350 million in funding for the Title X family planning program as a minimal investment in basic health care for low-income women. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Advocates for Youth
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association of University Women
American Civil Liberties Union
Americans for Democratic Action
American Psychological Association
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs
Association of Reproductive Health Professionals
Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses
Catholics for a Free Choice
Child Welfare League of America
Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America
NARAL Pro-Choice America
National Abortion Federation
National Association of County and City Health Officials
National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health
National Council of Jewish Women
National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association
National Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Parenting and Prevention
National Partnership for Women and Families
National Women's Health Network
National Women's Law Center
People For the American Way
Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health ®
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.
Population Connection
Reproductive Health Technologies Project
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States
Society for Adolescent Medicine
The Alan Guttmacher Institute
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations