[Dialogue] Ideology Surfaces Again on HHS Website

[Harry Wainwright]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 11, 2007
10:01 AM

CONTACT: NARAL Pro-Choice America  
Ted Miller, 202.973.3032

 

Ideology Surfaces Again on HHS Website
Unproven Abortion Claims Are Another Example of Bush Administration
Replacing Science With Political Rhetoric

 

WASHINGTON - JULY 11 - Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America,
today announced that her organization has discovered new, politically biased
information on a government health website. 

The Department of Health and Human Services recently revised its website,
4Parents.gov, and replaced factual data designed to help parents talk about
preventing teen pregnancy with biased and misleading claims, including one
that says, "Abortions can have complications. There may be emotional
consequences, as well: some women say that they feel sad and some use more
alcohol or drugs than before."
[http://www.4parents.gov/sexrisky/teen_preg.htm]. 

Keenan said the website's content continues a pattern by the Bush
administration of manipulating science in order to spread anti-choice
propaganda. 

"They've done it again. President Bush and his allies are bent on misleading
parents and teens," Keenan said. "It is outrageous that the department
charged with providing Americans objective information about health is
disguising unproven political rhetoric as sound science."

Just today, Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general from 2002 to
2006, told a House committee, "Anything that doesn't fit into the political
appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored,
marginalized or simply buried." 

In the past, the Bush administration was forced to remove medically
inaccurate material from the National Institutes of Health's website that
falsely linked abortion to breast cancer, a claim roundly rejected by
medical researchers and breast-cancer prevention advocates. 

For three years, the Bush administration's political appointees interfered
with the Food and Drug Administration's decision on the Plan BR emergency
contraceptive, delaying the eventual approval of the back-up form of birth
control for over-the-counter sale. Bush and his anti-choice congressional
allies have continuously increased funding for dangerous and ineffective
abstinence-only programs. 

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