A Penny-Wise Legacy

California’s next governor probably will have to pay millions of extra dollars in social welfare costs because Gov. George Deukmejian doesn’t believe in state support for family planning and has cut the program as much as he can. That is a legacy that a thrifty governor should have tried to avoid. It is certainly not a legacy of a governor who cared about the health needs of women in poverty.

The Legislature put $36.2 million in the state budget for the Office of Family Planning. The governor cut that by two-thirds, the maximum allowed by law. Without an emergency funding bill, that will mean that some clinics must close or severely curtail their services, which range from birth control counseling to screening for cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. In Los Angeles County, there are 82 state-subsidized clinics serving as many as 170,000 women. Primarily poor women use these clinics, and it is poor women who will suffer because of the governor’s action.

The National Right to Life Committee people are delighted. They say the clinics promote abortion. Nonsense. The clinic staffs would far prefer to counsel teen-agers and young women before they become pregnant and thus avoid the option of abortion. They will, in fact, have to deal with the prospect of increased abortions because of Deukmejian’s shortsighted policy.

California once was a pioneer in providing family planning help. But as in many other areas, the state seems to have lost the trail. The state can only hope that the next governor will return to the path of both true fiscal prudence and help for the poor women who want to plan pregnancy.