Bill Would Require Birth Control For Welfare Benefits Would Depend On Use Of ‘Available Methods Or Devices’

Fri., Jan. 20, 1995

Jim Brunner Staff Writer

If you’re on the dole, you should be on the pill.

That’s the message Rep. David Chappell, D-Centralia, wants to send to state welfare recipients.

He introduced a bill this week that would require people on welfare to prove they have “access to” and are “using available birth control methods or devices” before receiving benefits.

“A lot of the people who find themselves in this situation ended up there because of irresponsible behavior,” Chappell said. “I just don’t think we should be rewarding parents and paying mothers to have more children.”

Chappell said he introduced the bill as a companion to the Republicans’ welfare reform package, which he said he supports. The Republican plan would end additional benefits for people who have children while on welfare.

If the state is not going to help pay families to raise extra children, the families should be discouraged from having them in the first place, he said.

But the main sponsor of the welfare reform package, Rep. Suzette Cooke, R-Kent, chuckled after reading Chappell’s bill for the first time Thursday.

“It’s not going to get a hearing,” Cooke predicted. She wondered how Chappell would monitor whether people were using contraceptives.

The bill leaves the specifics on enforcement up to the Department of Social and Health Services.

A department spokesperson was skeptical.

“I would think that would be a little hard to enforce, for obvious reasons,” said Kathy Spears, DSHS spokeswoman.

Chappell said perhaps welfare recipients could show the agency copies of doctors’ prescriptions or receipts from contraceptive purchases.

And people who object to such forms of birth control as the pill or condoms always could resort to more natural strategies.

Chappell said he knows the bill would be hard to enforce. “There’s no way we’re going to be able to hold these people’s hands into the bedroom,” he said.

But he said he wanted to bring up the issue.

“More than anything, it’s raised some eyebrows.”

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