Spending cut would backfire

Eliminating the Take Charge program is shortsighted and makes poor fiscal sense.

Take Charge, our state’s largest and most successful family planning program, has served 400,000 people since its implementation in 2001, offering birth control options, contraceptive counseling, cancer screenings, family planning office visits and educational services. For every $1 our state invests in Take Charge, we receive $9 from the federal government.

Now, as our state seeks to remedy budget problems, we face the elimination of this successful, money-saving program. Eliminating Take Charge means that annually, 50,000 low-income people will be left without affordable birth control and family planning services. It means $45 million per year in new, state-paid pregnancy care costs. It means some of our state’s most vulnerable people will be left without any health care at all.

A budget deficit is exactly the time to fund family planning. Reproductive health care supports healthy families by allowing people to plan their pregnancies, and it keeps state Medicaid, pregnancy care and other costs down. Family planning saves money. Eliminating this program will be devastating to low-income Washingtonians.

As a taxpayer, a woman and a reproductive health professional I strongly urge Gov. Gregoire to not cut this essential program.

Anna Franks

President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho

Spokane