Bush family-planning chief tied to birth-control foes

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said Thursday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month’s midterm elections. President Bush last week pushed the Senate to confirm John Bolton as ambassador to the United States and this week renominated six appellate-court nominees who have previously been blocked by lawmakers.

The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman’s Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six pregnancy service centers in eastern Massachusetts.

“A Woman’s Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness,” the group’s Web site says.

Keroack was traveling and could not be reached for comment.

A Woman’s Concern president Mark Conrad said Keroack would be able to make the transition to leading a federal program in which the provision of birth control is an intergral part. “I don’t think it’s going to be an issue for him,” Conrad said.

The group helps women in unplanned pregnancies but discourages abortions, Conrad said.

The federal family-planning program, created in 1970, supports a network of 4,600 family-planning clinics that provide information and counseling to 5 million people each year. Services include patient education and counseling, breast and pelvic exams, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling and screenings for cervical cancer, sexually-transmitted diseases and HIV.