Think the Bush Administration is going to tame its extremism in this lame duck period or over the next two years? Think again, at least with respect to its policies on women.
Earlier this month, Bush appointed Eric Keroack to head family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. What’s so extreme about Keroack? Everything:
Before his appointment, Dr. Keroack served as the medical director of A Woman’s Concern, a network of pregnancy counseling clinics across Massachusetts whose method of trying to dissuade women from having an abortion includes spreading the scary and medically inaccurate myth that having an abortion steeply increases the risk of breast cancer. The group also has a policy against dispensing contraception even to married women. It has stated on its Web site that the distribution of contraceptive drugs or devices is”demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.”Dr. Keroack now claims that he disagrees with these approaches, a repositioning that seems very belated.
When speaking at abstinence conferences across the country, and in his writings, Dr. Keroack has promoted the novel argument that sex with multiple partners alters brain chemistry in a way that makes it harder for women to form bonding relationships. One of the researchers cited by Dr. Keroack has called the claim”complete pseudoscience”unsupported by her findings.
That’s from this editorial from the New York Times calling the appointment a “farce.” I call it more harm for women and women’s health.
– David S. Cohen
