Last week, Susan Orr, the
administration-appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary of Population
Affairs, resigned from her post. Orr's job was to oversee family
planning services and programs for low-income citizens, and, ironically
(but not surprisingly), Orr's professional history indicates that she
has long been an opponent of contraceptive access.

In other words, Bush's family planning official was against family planning. Bush's strategy for eliminating programs that go against conservative ideology seems to be to appoint people who don't believe in those programs
so that, essentially, nothing gets done. These appointments appease the
conservative bigwigs who continue to defend Bush despite his incessant
failures.

But the people who lose out? Low-income citizens who rely on these programs
to gain access to contraceptives, reproductive education and health
services. Teenage girls who, in the absence of comprehensive sex ed,
now experience a one in four prevalence of sexual disease.
In other words, the people who have been losing out in the past are
continuing to lose out, and the folks who have historically been
appeased for their power continue to be appeased.

It is essentially undermining the security
of these folks to strip them of the resources necessary to protect
their bodies and control their futures. In a land where success hinges
on the ability to shape your own fate, it is irresponsible to deny our
citizens the right to choose their own paths, and to leave peoples'
lives up to chance.