Family Planning

It happened again. Pennsylvania passed a budget with no state money for family planning services. There had been talk of a $1 million allocation - a mere sliver of a 414.5 million budget - and for each dollar we were going to spend on family planning programs, the savings in future costs were projected at $4.40. Yet there was nothing. For those of us who view family planning seriously, and see this as an issue beyond partisan politics, it is hard to imagine that the legislature has not taken responsible action in more than a decade.

An unintended pregnancy can't help but bring anguish and regret. An abortion or the birth of an unwanted child exacts a high emotional price. But misery can't be measured. Money can. The Alan Guttmacher Institute wanted to know: Does government money spent on family planning services for low-income women pay off? One out of four women in this country who use reversible contraceptives gets the birth control through publicly funded programs: a family planning clinic, or a doctor reimbursed by Medicaid.

He didn't exactly do a George Bush and say, "Read my lips: state funds for family planning," but it was close. In 1994, candidate Tom Ridge made it plain he supported what his predecessor Robert P. Casey emphatically did not. If he were elected, Ridge said, Pennsylvania would rejoin 45 other states that fund family planning. This newspaper took him at his word, and so did lots of Pennsylvanians. And for one brief, shining moment in June, Gov. Ridge stood up to heavy pressure and kept to his promise.

Last year a committee of pre-eminent American scientists published a list of global threats, of which overpopulation ranked second only to nuclear war. "Overpopulation?" mumbles a friend who has just stepped into the room. "Didn't we solve that problem a decade ago?" My friend knows we have environmental problems: global warming, deforestation, topsoil erosion, acid rain and the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species each year, just to name a few. But he is also among that class of otherwise well-informed individuals who have a hard time connecting the dots.

Good Friday is an emotional time for those on both sides of the abortion rights issue - a time for fearsome demonstrations and responses. It is also an appropriate time to revisit the only realistic "common ground" on this explosive controversy: preventing abortions by preventing unintended pregnancies. Over the years, Pennsylvania has spent time and money to set up legal barriers to abortion through the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, generally upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last summer - but not yet enforced.

WITH three first-degree murder verdicts against Kermit Gosnell, we can call him a baby-killer without the political freight that that term usually carries in the fight over abortion rights. There was no ambiguity in his actions, no debate over when a fetus becomes viable when he performed his illegal late-term abortions of some babies who were born alive. No one would defend his actions as legal, or protected by Roe v. Wade. The verdict may bring to a close the gruesome and horrifying details of Gosnell's butchery practice.

When Melissa Weiler Gerber became executive director of the Family Planning Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania in 2010, she called it "a challenging time. " The nonprofit council - which administers public funding for reproductive health services in the region - was operating in the red. Nationally, family planning funding was under renewed political attack. And Gerber, 45, was following a tough act: Dorothy Mann, 71, known during her 33-year tenure for her vision and brash style.

Greetings, unwitting general public! Did you realize there's a "two-track system of justice" at Philadelphia Traffic Court, according to an investigative report commissioned by Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald Castille, "one for the politically connected and another for the unwitting general public"? That would be us, the clueless, ticket-paying schmoes without access to our Democratic ward leader's cell. The report, required reading for anyone who still believes in fairness, justice, or Santa Claus, shows that ticket-fixing was rampant at the patronage swamp, involving at least seven judges and much of the staff, who offered a generous Friends and Family plan to the region's most politically connected.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's new message to parents: Get busy and have babies. In a major reversal of once far-reaching family planning policies, authorities are now slashing its birth-control programs in an attempt to avoid an aging demographic similar to many Western countries that are struggling to keep up with state medical and social security costs. The changes - announced in Iranian media last week - came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the country's wide-ranging contraceptive services as "wrong.

Review for judge over Obama e-mail WASHINGTON - A judicial-misconduct review has been opened against the chief federal judge in Montana for using his computer in his courthouse chambers to forward a racially insensitive e-mail about President Obama. The review was begun at the request of Judge Richard Cebull himself, as calls mounted Thursday for his resignation and legal-ethics experts predicted the incident was likely to lead to some kind of public admonishment for him. The judge, 67, an appointee of President George W. Bush, maintained that the e-mail was meant as anti-Obama rather than racist, but added, "I can obviously understand why people would be offended.

THE PLOT HAS thickened in "The Mystery of the Photo of the Open Casket. " Carolyn Whigham of Whigham Funeral Home, in Newark, N.J., which handled services for Whitney Houston , says the home had nothing to do with the photo. But Whigham and two ministers say they do know who took the ghoulish shot that ran in the National Enquirer . They're just not snitchin'. They say that identifying the person is up to the Houston family. Whigham told the Newark Star-Ledger yesterday that her funeral home "had no role in this shameful betrayal.

Smart people and family planning Many things in Karen Heller's column "What? Birth control? Again?" (Sunday) are false and offensive, but the claim that the Catholic Church endorses "the rhythm method, which is contraception for stupid people," takes the prize. What the church actually endorses, is natural family planning (NFP). Catholic doctors like Thomas Hilgers and his team at Creighton University are careful, intelligent scientists who publish on these subjects in peer-reviewed journals.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno will be buried Wednesday in a private ceremony. And in a nod to the university to which he devoted most of his life, his family also announced Monday three days of public memorials on campus. The plan - drafted a day after Paterno's death at 85 from lung cancer - reflected a thaw in the icy relations between the family of a man who did much to further Pennsylvania State University's academic and athletic reputations and the school's leadership, which fired him over his response to child-sex-abuse allegations involving a former assistant coach.

Jan. 22 marks the 39th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. This Supreme Court ruling guaranteed that the constitutional right to privacy encompasses a woman's right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy to term. The decision is one of the most emotional and difficult a woman will ever make, and she must be free to decide. Yet, today, lawmakers across the country remain committed to denying women that right by rolling back the only law that keeps abortion care safe and legal.

By Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba Most experts agree that the mark of long-term success in Afghanistan will be stable governance that allows the economy, democracy, and the people to flourish. Many factors will determine that, but a major one that seems to be left out of most high-level conversations is population. Afghanistan is a country of 31 million people, but that number will double by 2035, according to the most recent U.N. projections, and could reach 126 million by midcentury.