Kentucky public health board to vote on contraception funding

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Both sides in the nation's abortion debate will be watching on Wednesday when a Kentucky public health board decides whether to turn down federal family-planning money that is used to dispense birth control pills to women.\nHard-line abortion foes want the Northern Kentucky Independent District Health Board to reject Title X funding, claiming that the pill can cause the equivalent of an abortion.\nThe showdown vote Wednesday night in Wilder could reverberate far beyond the northernmost corner of Kentucky, a\nheavily Roman Catholic area that is a hotbed of anti-abortion fervor.\nIt is almost unheard of for a community to reject Title X money. In one of the rare instances since the federal program was signed into law in 1970 by President Nixon, McHenry County, Ill., voted in 1998 to refuse the funding, though in that case the debate had to do with whether parents should be notified if their teenage daughters get contraceptives.\nJudie Brown, president of the American Life League, said the Kentucky board's rejection of the money would be a huge victory for the anti-abortion movement and a "blueprint for victory" in other communities.\nOn the other side of the issue, Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights\nAction League, said the debate shows that "pro-choice Americans cannot be complacent about fundamental freedoms\nsuch as the right to use contraception."\n"It reveals the extremism of the anti-choice agenda," she said.\nBoard chairman Greg Kennedy predicted a close vote.\nTitle X funding provided nearly $170,000 this fiscal year to the health board, which serves four urban and rural counties just south of Cincinnati. The money was used to provide contraceptives and related reproductive health care services to thousands of poor women.\nThe health clinics that are overseen by the 29-member board also provide gynecological care for poor women, including pregnancy tests, breast exams and screening for sexually transmitted diseases.\nKennedy said the loss of Title X funding could prompt women to seek those services at other clinics where they could obtain contraceptives.\nLeading the push to reject Title X funding is Northern Kentucky Right to Life, which prides itself on its refusal to compromise. It has run newspaper ads asserting that contraceptives such as the IUD, Norplant, the "morning-after" pill - even the standard birth control pill used in the - cause abortions.\n"It's our argument that they are bad morals, bad medicine and bad public policy that should not be distributed to the public with taxpayers' dollars," said Robert Cetrulo, the group's president and a former U.S. magistrate.\nNot all abortion opponents have joined the cause. The National Right to Life Committee has taken no position. And not all of the health board's anti-abortion members support giving up the family-planning money.\nThe effort by some anti-abortion activists to equate the standard birth control pill with abortion has drawn strong objections. An estimated 10.4 million American women use the pill.\n"Oral contraceptives are clearly just that - they are contraception," said Dr. Kimberly Alumbaugh, a Louisville\nobstetrician/gynecologist. "That means preventing conception. When one prevents conception, one doesn't have to worry about abortion."\nBirth control pills prevent conception by blocking the release of eggs from a woman's ovaries. But if ovulation occurs and an egg is fertilized, the pill can prevent the fertilized egg from implanting because it alters the lining of the uterus.\nSome anti-abortion groups equate that to abortion.