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OCEAN COUNTY, NJ – The Family Planning Center of Ocean County, N.J., is in trouble.
Situated on the state’s Atlantic coastal plain 60 miles north of New York City and 50 miles west of Philadelphia, it’s the only family planning center serving Ocean County. This year the center expects to serve 3,500 clients – but it may not be able to, says Michele Jaker, the executive director of the Family Planning Association of New Jersey and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of New Jersey.
“The loss of federal funds would mean that they would have to close their doors,” Jaker said.
Like family planning centers across the country, centers in New Jersey are intently watching the budget debate in Congress because Title X – the only federal program dedicated to funding family planning programs – may be axed.
New Jersey’s centers are facing a double-whammy. State funding has been eliminated. Some centers, like the one in Ocean County, are facing closure. Others are reducing hours and staff. These measures mean patients don’t get care or get delayed care that could mean a worse diagnosis than if caught early, which all translates into increased healthcare costs for everyone.
“It’s not a budgetary savings when you cut family planning services,” said Adam Sonfield, senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit supporting sexual and reproductive health. The institute was originally connected to Planned Parenthood but became autonomous in 1977.
The institute says that in 2008, family planning centers supported by Title X served 4.7 million economically disadvantaged women across the nation. Without the contraceptive services offered by family planning centers, Sonfield said, the numbers of unintended pregnancies and abortions would be a third higher.
Many of these women use family planning centers as their form of primary care, getting pelvic and other medical exams and testing for sexually transmitted diseases and for diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Given all the services family planning centers provide to the economically disadvantaged, Sonfield said, it “makes these cuts (defunding Title X) clearly misguided. As the saying goes, ‘Penny wise, pound foolish.’”
Grant programs – however worthy – should be on the list of things Congress should cut given the country’s deficit, said Chuck Donovan, a senior research fellow and co-author of “Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood.”
“We are in a dire budget circumstance,” he said, “so absolutely nothing should be off the table.”
“There is a lot of duplicative funding for family planning. (Defunding Title X) doesn’t mean the end of care for women,” he said. “There are other programs that deliver essentially the same thing.”
“A lot of other sources of money are also under attack,” countered Sonfield, such as Medicaid, which is the largest public dollars source for low-income Americans.
“Without (Title X),” Sonfield said, “it remains to be seen how whatever remains of the system of these family planning centers would function.”