Tom Coburn: “I rise to oppose the Greenwood amendment. I think what we need to ask ourselves is, everybody has made a lot of claims…”

“I rise to oppose the Greenwood amendment. I think what we need to ask ourselves is, everybody has made a lot of claims about what title X has and has not done. There is not a scientific study that will evaluate it. But there is a retrospective study based on economics. Mr. Chairman, what we do know is since 1970, we have had a rise in teenage pregnancies, a rise in abortion. We now have a sexually transmitted disease epidemic that is out of control and unheard of anywhere in the western world. What we also are told is that there has not been a study of effectiveness. We have one study that we can look at that will tell us what is going on, and it is a study that will be published next month out of the University of California by a Ph.D. economist. It says the following things: That those States which spend less money on family planning have less of those three things. They have less teenage pregnancy, less abortion, less sexually transmitted disease. It also says that the States with the highest amount of money will have the most abortion, will have the most teenage pregnancy, and the most sexually transmitted disease. Mr. Chairman, I urge Members' support for the Livingston-Smith amendment.”