Nearly twenty years ago I ran for student body president of Sunset High School in Beaverton, Oregon on a platform of providing birth control to sexually active students. A couple of girls in my class had confided in me that they had had abortions. And as the son of a certified nurse midwife that worked in public health I was well versed in the need for responsible behavior to keep the rates of teen pregnancy down.
Twenty years ago it was controversial for anyone to advocate that birth control be made available to teens. In all that time you would have thought our federal government would have developed a better response than "just say no."
As I mentioned last week, President Bush is appointing a new deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Eric Keroackis opposes the use of birth control. That is important because the program he'll oversee is in charge of pregnancy prevention programs - including contraceptive distribution - in low-income communities. Planned Parenthood has launched a campaign calling for Bush's appointment to be withdrawn.
This battle is not just being fought on the political front. Marissa N. Valeri, outreach program officer for Catholics for a Free Choice, wrote recently to let me know that:
The Condoms4Life campaign, a campaign to overturn the Catholic bishop's ban on condoms and to encourage Catholics and all people of faith to use condoms, is spearheading a campaign. We're asking people to sign on to a letter which we will present to Pope Benedict XVI - asking him on behalf of all people from around the world and from all faiths to overturn the ban.
Condoms save lives - they prevent disease and stop pregnancies before they begin. Both the President and the Pope do a disservice to the cause of life by working to oppose contraceptives. Send them a message letting them know that people of good faith support the use of contraceptives. Twenty years ago I lost my race for student body president. No big deal, of course. But today millions of lives across the world depend on whether or not we win this fight.
