The Honorable Arlen Specter
711 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Tom Harkin
731 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Thad Cochran
113 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Robert Byrd
311 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senators:
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 2006 and request that it be funded at $350 million.
Title X has 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 women who would otherwise lack access to health care. Given the tight budget year, we urge you to invest in programs like Title X that promote public health and at the same time save tax dollars. For every public dollar invested in family planning, three dollars are saved in Medicaid costs for pregnancy and newborn care alone.
Currently Title X and other sources of federal funding are insufficient to meet the enormous need for publicly supported family planning services. Today, almost 17 million women need publicly supported contraceptive care-a number which grew by 400,000 alone between 2000 and 2002 due to a rising uninsured population. Title X clinics serve over five million of these women at 4,500 clinics nationwide, helping them to plan the number and timing of their pregnancies and enjoy improved health. Two-thirds of these women received Title X services for free, because they have incomes under the 2005 federal poverty level of $16,090 per year (for a family of three). Were it not for Title X, many of these women would have no other source of care.
Fortunately, Title X is one of the nation's best, and most cost-effective, public health success stories. The continuing need for family planning is clear - a typical woman spends about three decades of her life trying to avoid pregnancy. Each year, Title X services enable Americans to prevent approximately one million unintended pregnancies, nearly half of which would end in abortion.
Title X clinics are also a vital source of other preventive health services for women. In addition to providing low-cost or free birth control counseling and supplies so that she may effectively plan her next pregnancy, an uninsured working mother can learn her HIV status and receive periodic services to detect and prevent cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. In calendar year 2003 alone, Title X-funded clinics provided 2.9 million Pap tests, 2.8 million breast exams, 5.1 million STD tests, and 526,360 HIV tests.
Yet Title X agencies are being stretched to the financial breaking point. Without additional funding clinics will be unable to both meet the increasing demand for services and provide the quality preventive services that is their trademark. Health care inflation has far outpaced funding for Title X clinics, which have been further strapped as a result of new and expensive contraceptive technologies, improved but 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. Had funding for Title X kept pace with medical inflation since FY 1980, it would now be funded at $671 million instead of the FY 2005 level of $286 million.
We thank you for your past support for the program, and urge you to provide $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.
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association of University Women (AAUW)
American Civil Liberties Union
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
American Nurses Association
American Psychological Association
American Social Health Association
Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs
Association of Reproductive Health Professionals
Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN)
Catholics for a Free Choice
Center for Reproductive Rights
Center for Women Policy Studies
Central Conference of American Rabbis
Disciples Justice Action Network (Disciples of Christ)
Equal Partners in Faith
Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America
Healthy Teen Network
NARAL Pro-Choice America
National Abortion Federation
National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors
National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health (NPWH) National Coalition of STD Directors
National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)
National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association
National Organization for Women
National Women's Health Network
National Women's Law Center
People For the American Way
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Population Connection
Reproductive Health Technologies Project
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)
Society for Adolescent Medicine
The Alan Guttmacher Institute
Union for Reform Judaism
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
Women of Reform Judaism
cc: Senate Appropriations Committee Members