At first glance, Oregon’s Family Planning Expansion Project appears to discriminate against gay patients. Created in 1999 as a Medicaid program for low-income Oregonians, FPEP offers “contraceptive management services,” which include annual exams, family planning counseling, laboratory tests for sexually transmitted infections and a one-year supply of a birth control method.
Because FPEP grew out of a mid-1990s push to curb teen pregnancy in Oregon, its family planning mission seems irrelevant to gay individuals. Yet the Oregon Administrative Rules governing the program state that “all services must be provided to eligible clients without regard to age, marital status, race, parity, disability or sexual orientation.”
Here’s the catch: No one is eligible for services unless they seek contraceptive services. Because of this specification, practitioners at the health center face a quandary when it comes to treating gay students. FPEP offers many other services that do not prevent pregnancy, but only to people who are using contraceptives. Basically, this amounts to discrimination against people who do not need contraception.
FPEP providers, including the University Health Center, have to decide whether to strictly adhere to that guideline or bend the rules.
The Oregon Department of Human Services needs to iron out this kink in FPEP. It does not make sense to provide free screening for STIs but not prevention. Making a patient’s need for contraceptives a prerequisite for receiving the other services needlessly leaves gay students out. Refusing service to people who are not potentially going to reproduce causes those people to either have to lie about their sexual activities or miss out on services that will benefit them.
Solving this problem would be simple. Oregon’s DHS should expand the program with the goal of protecting low-income patients’ sexual health in general, or a separate program should be created for that purpose. This would make these invaluable services available to everyone.
Unfortunately such a program might run afoul of the current political climate and government’s emphasis on abstinence. This should not stop us from providing such a valuable service to people who might not otherwise be able to obtain it. No one should have to lie about his or her sexual orientation to receive protection from or screening for STIs.