It was almost as if the Bush administration was trying to find the most offensive choice possible to be the new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. The Bush gang found Dr. Eric Keroack, who’ll oversee HHS’s $283 million reproductive-health program, a $30 million program that encourages abstinence among teenagers, and HHS’s Office of Population Affairs, which funds birth control, pregnancy tests, counseling, and screenings for sexually transmitted disease and HIV.
Considering Keroack’s apparent belief that the distribution of contraceptives is “demeaning to women,” the administration’s announcement is raising some, shall we say, concerns among Democrats, women’s groups, and professionals in the reproductive health field. Yesterday, the administration started pushing back, telling reporters that Keroack isn’t the nut he appears to be.
Despite his work for a Christian pregnancy counseling group that opposes contraception, the physician who yesterday began overseeing federal family-planning programs has prescribed birth control for his patients, a Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman said.
Eric Keroack, a nationally known advocate of abstinence until marriage, served for more than a decade as medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a Massachusetts nonprofit group that discourages abortion and does not distribute information promoting birth control. But HHS spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday that most of Keroack’s professional time had been devoted to his private practice of 20 years, not the group.
“When he was in private practice as a doctor, he did prescribe birth control,” Pearson said. “And he did family planning with patients at their request as part of his private physician role.” She said Keroack has prescribed contraceptives for both married and unmarried women.
Nice try, Bush gang, but he’s still a ridiculous choice for the job.
In fact, Slate’s Amanda Schaffer described Keroack as the “administration’s crazy new HHS appointment.”
Eric Keroack is a Massachusetts obstetrician-gynecologist who argues that abstinence until marriage is the only healthy choice for women. Until recently, he served as medical director of a pregnancy-counseling organization that runs down contraception and gives out scientifically false health information — for instance, that condoms “offer virtually no protection” against herpes or HPV. Keroack also promotes a wacky piece of pseudoscience: the claim that premarital sex disrupts brain chemistry so as to create a physiological barrier to happy marriage.
Keroack’s appointment, as deputy assistant secretary of population affairs within the Department of Health and Human Services, did not require congressional approval. The Bush administration picked him on its own. And women’s health advocates, editorial pages, and bloggers, along with Democratic members of Congress, are right to think he’s a crazy choice for this job.
In his new position, Keroack will be required to help provide information and access to contraception — which he disapproves of, disparages, and questions the reliability of. It’s akin to appointing Jerry Falwell to head up the National Academy of Sciences (though I probably shouldn’t give the White House any ideas).
Schaffer added:
In his new role, Keroack will have extensive power to shape the kinds of information disseminated to millions of women. He will be able to develop new guidelines for clinics, set priorities, and determine how scarce dollars get spent, says Marilyn Keefe of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. “We’ve seen that people in these political slots have a tremendous influence over how programs get implemented,” she said. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services defended the appointment in an e-mail, stating that “Dr. Keroack is highly qualified and a well-respected physician.”
But at a moment when the need for subsidized birth control is rising, and clinics are struggling to pay for basic services — not to mention advances in screening and prevention like the HPV vaccine — a new hire hostile to family planning and accurate medical information is the last thing women need.
Yes, I know, we’re talking about the Bush administration. When looking for someone to head up family-planning programs, Karl Rove isn’t going to put Joycelyn Elders’ resume at the top of the list. I get that.
But there have to be some legitimate Republican physicians/scientists the administration can turn to because Keroack’s appointment is a bad joke. It’s not just his ties to far-right groups, it’s his own lectures and published works. His appointment is a slap in the face, not only of the reality-based community, but of common sense.