August 2000 • Volume 6 • Number 8
AAFP speaks up for access to reproductive health care
BY JANE STOEVER
With a boost from the Academy, the AMA House of Delegates voted recently for greater access to reproductive health care.
Delegates adopted a compromise resolution, saying it was not about terminating pregnancy but preventing pregnancy. At issue are hospitals that stop offering such services as vasectomies and tubal ligations after mergers with Catholic health plans or other organizations opposed to birth control.
The original resolution from AMA's California delegation said health facilities should lose federal funding if they don't provide birth control services.
The first to testify before the reference committee considering the resolution: Chicago's Cardinal Francis George. He charged the resolution could help tear Medicaid and Medicare funding away from Catholic hospitals that, on moral grounds, refuse to sterilize men or women.
Delegates said some women in rural areas have wanted tubal ligations right after childbirth, have not been able to have them where their children were born and had to travel later to distant hospitals for the procedure.
Dale Moquist, M.D., of Bryan, Texas, vice chair of the AAFP delegation, told the reference committee the AAFP supported the provision of reproductive services: "Many of our Academy members are in rural health care, where there is only one hospital, and we see this as an access-to-care issue."
The reference committee revised the resolution, deleting reference to federal funding. The committee retained the resolution's support for requiring health plans to provide enrollees with reproductive services when the services are covered benefits. The committee's revision reaffirmed AMA policy that no health care providers (including hospitals) should be required to perform any act violating their moral principles.
During debate on the floor of the house, an amendment was proposed: "In the case of mergers and/or acquisitions of health care systems, our AMA support(s) action to ensure continued patient access to pregnancy prevention services within the community, including tubal sterilization and vasectomy."
AAFP Director Deborah Haynes, M.D., of Wichita, Kan., said, "Consolidating health care systems have changed our health care environment and made access more difficult. We serve patients with diverse views and beliefs, and patients who desire pregnancy prevention should be able to obtain these services. We support the amendment."
The voice vote on the amendment was too close to call, so a standing vote was held, and the amendment passed 247-184. Then the resolution as a whole passed by voice vote.
The AMA meeting was June 11-15.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2000 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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