SUMMARY: A panel of appellate judges on Monday considered whether a Trump administration rule on federal funding for clinics that make abortion referrals may remain in place while legal challenges work their way through the courts. More than 900 clinics, many run by Planned Parenthood, have given up funds rather than complying with the new regulations. John Yang talks to Sarah Varney of Kaiser Health News.
SUMMARY: For six years, the Colorado Family Planning Initiative has been providing free long-term birth control to teens and low-income women. The program has reduced unplanned teen pregnancies by 39 percent, and the abortion rate by 42 percent. The group has been lobbying for state funding, but Republican lawmakers have said no. Special correspondent Mary McCarthy reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Next, a Colorado birth control program is losing its funding, despite a remarkable track record.
Special correspondent Mary MacCarthy has our report from Denver.
MARY MACCARTHY (NewsHour): Victoria Garcia was just 22, with big career plans, when she found out she was pregnant. The news, she said, was jolting.
VICTORIA GARCIA, Colorado: Motherhood wasn’t a stage in my life that I was ready for. I was in college. I was focused on school and getting my degree.
MARY MACCARTHY: Garcia said she had wanted to use a long-acting birth control method, but couldn’t afford it.
VICTORIA GARCIA: When you’re young and you’re in college and you’re barely making ends meet with food and rent and other menial costs, $500 or $550 for an IUD or an implant out of pocket is — it’s outrageous. It’s too much.
MARY MACCARTHY: Garcia had the baby, a son, Liam, and still managed to graduate from college. She credits her mother and husband for helping her. But there’s something else she says that had been critical for her success.
VICTORIA GARCIA: The day I got my IUD placed, the midwife handed this card to me and she said, you don’t have to come back until January 2022. This IUD has been life-changing for me. It really has.
BRIAN SWITZER, San Antonio, Texas: I started showing my co-workers the "Today Show" website. They got this section here called discuss. What do you think? And I thought, oh, well, let's see what everybody else thinks. And the first two started out very nice. You know, what's the legal status, you know, is there any immigration issues, things of that nature. And then it got ugly.
People started saying things like the use of surrogates is a disgusting and immoral practice to begin with, but then to farm it out like cheap labor to women in India, we should be disgusted and ashamed.
And then you get the, oh, hey, it's all about saving money, you know? What about adopting? There were more people telling us, you should have adopted. You should have adopted. Well, that's placing the entire orphan issue on the shoulders of infertile couples.
By their argument, anybody who has ever proactively tried to get pregnant together and succeeded and had their own children has robbed an orphan of a loving home, plain and simple. So don't place that burden on the infertile couples out there. And what kills me is everybody screaming about the surrogacy issue. Oh, it's a baby mill, you know, it's a puppy farm.
And it's not. I felt I had to defend Lisa and I, as well as every other non-Indian that's going to India to have this done.
So here's what I wrote to all these people that were just spewing this hateful talk: "The surrogates are well-compensated in line with their local economy. I have seen poverty unlike anything I could have imagined. And knowing what this process is going to do for the surrogate and her family in the long run makes me realize that this is a very good thing for all parties involved."
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Doctors are especially excited because gandarusa doesn't alter male hormones but rather changes the chemistry on the tip of each individual spermatozoon, making them unable to pierce the outer wall of a female egg, or oocyte.
Dr. Dyan Pramesti is working on the clinical trial.
DR. DYAN PRAMESTI, Airlangga University: It interferes with the enzyme which is located on the sperm head. The enzyme is needed to perforate the wall of the oocyte. If the enzyme is not active, or reduces the activity, the sperm cannot perforate the wall of the oocyte.
RAY SUAREZ: So no pregnancy?
DR. DYAN PRAMESTI: No pregnancy.
RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Pramesti and her colleagues have made another crucial finding: the pill's effect is not permanent. On average, men were fertile again just two months after they stopped taking the pill.
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DR. SUGIRI SYARIEF, director of the Population and Family Planning Board, Indonesia: They think that. Family planning, oh that is the woman's responsibility. Right now we try to make awareness among the men that family planning is not only for women, but it is a decision made by couples, husbands and wives.
RAY SUAREZ: But Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih says the low participation rate is because right now men have only two options: using condoms or getting a vasectomy.
DR. ENDANG RAHAYU SEDYANINGSIH, Minister of Health, Indonesia: They don't like those choices. But here if we can find a pill that they can just swallow and no affect to their—
RAY SUAREZ: Desire?
DR. ENDANG RAHAYU SEDYANINGSIH: Yes (laughing). Libido. So I think they would be very happy to take that.
