Pick strains credulity

This is excerpted from an editorial in TheWashington Post.

President Trump appointed an energy secretary who wanted to abolish the Energy Department and an Environmental Protection Agency chief who opposed much of what the EPA does. Even so, the selection of someone who doesn’t believe in contraception to take charge of federal family planning efforts strains all credulity.

Teresa Manning, a former lobbyist with the National Right to Life Committee and legislative analyst for the Family Research Council, was named this week as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Administrations are entitled to staff their government with people who share their views. Yet the person chosen to help manage the $286 million Title X family planning program, which mainly serves low-income and uninsured men and women, has spent much of her career denigrating family planning methods. Appearing on a 2003 panel about a book she edited, she said, “I always shake my head. You know, family planning is what occurs between a husband and a wife and God. And it doesn’t really involve the federal government, much less the United Nations, where we hear about family planning all the time. What are they doing in that business?”

Access to birth control explains why the country is experiencing the lowest rate of unintended pregnancy in 30 years and a historic low for teen pregnancy. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which provides research on reproductive health care, the contraceptive care delivered by Title X clinics in 2014 helped women avoid 904,000 unintended pregnancies, which would have resulted in 326,000 abortions.

Public health should be guided by science and facts, not ideology or conjecture; the views expressed by Manning make her the wrong choice for this important job.