Ernest Istook: “this is an amendment that goes to the heart and soul of what happens in the families in the United States of America…”

“this is an amendment that goes to the heart and soul of what happens in the families in the United States of America, what happens with our most precious possessions and involvements, our children and the role between parent and child. Mr. Chairman, this goes to the heart of what families do with their children, what we teach our children, and the role that we undertake as parents, and, unfortunately, how one of the major programs in this bill interferes with that. One of the most important things that most of us teach our children is that certain things should be reserved for marriage. We are talking, of course, about the sexual conduct of teenagers. We are talking about the fact that the out-of-wedlock teenage birth rate has doubled since the adoption of a particular Federal program, a program that allows counseling and contraceptives and condoms and IUD's and birth control pills and other chemicals to be given to youngsters. Mr. Chairman, I am talking about people as young as 13 and 12 years old even, and their parents never know about it and their parents are never notified, they are never involved. Two million dollars a year of our tax money goes to this program. One and a half million teenagers a year go to the so-called title X clinics. A third of the caseload that they handle is teenagers.”