Ideology Surfaces Again on HHS Website

Washington, D.C. – 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 B® 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.

Contact:
Ted Miller, 202.973.3032