10 minute read
News
Missouri’s Private (and Free) Birth Control Written by DANNY WICENTOWSKI
Ten months into a six-year, $20 million effort to expand contraceptive access in Missouri, some 9,000 patients have obtained some form of birth control, totally free — and not a dime of it is government money.
Advertisement
The initiative, called The Right Time, works to provide free or lowcost birth control through seven providers across the state, a number that organizers say will expand to 21 next year. While The Right Time touts a “full range” of birth control methods, it does not cover tubal ligation, vasectomies or emergency contraception like the Plan B “morning after” pill.
But aside from those exceptions, The Right Time is aiming to give individuals a chance to make reproductive decisions that don’t begin and end with the price. Kathleen Holmes, the vice president of strategic initiatives for the Missouri Foundation for Health, which is funding the initiative, says the The Right Time is about Ȋleveling the playing fieldȋ when it comes to access barriers.
“This is not an initiative to tell women what they should be using, but rather to help them make the most informed decision based on their particular intention,” says Holmes, who explains that that the initiative’s funding covers more than just the price tag; the initiative will pay for training and outreach for clinic staff, as well as ensuring that clinics can maintain stocks of the expensive but highly effective longterm birth control methods like IUDs and implants. The seven health centers currently enrolled in the initiative represent a total of fourteen clinics across the state. The next class of participating clinics is scheduled to be announced in March.
Right now, half of the participat
NEWS
A Trump administration gag rule has drastically a ected funds for family planning.| SHUTTERSTOCK
ing clinics are located in the St. Louis region, including Planned Parenthood’s Central West End and South Grand locations and the Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Center in Florissant. Outside the metro area, the initiative’s reach extends to multiple clinics in Jefferson County, Columbia, Springfield and -oplin.
So, why set up a privately funded, multi-year campaign to expand birth control access in Missouri? At issue is the rate of unintended pregnancies, which hovers around 50 percent of all pregnancies in the state. (In 2010, the Guttmacher Institute found 51 percent of that year’s pregnancies in Missouri were unintended. In the most recently available state survey, from 2016, 51 percent of respondents answered “No” to the question “When you got pregnant with your new baby, were you trying to get pregnant?”)
By 2024, The Right Time aims to cut 10 percent from the current rate of unintended pregnancies, which currently costs the state millions in health care and increases the risk of premature birth and low birth weight, conditions which Ȋput babies at risk of dying the first year,” warns Holmes.
Recent studies and programs also lend strong evidence that expanding contraception access can help reduce abortions. The privately funded Colorado Family Planning Initiative reported that
its efforts “drove a 50 percent reduction in teen births and abortions” between 2009 and 2015. In St. Louis, one of the largest studies of contraceptive use was conducted by Washington University: In 2007, researchers gave thousands of local women free birth control, and over the next two years St. Louis’ abortion rate declined by more than 20 percent.
Of course, this isn’t just a matter for deep-pocketed philanthropies. The federal government’s Title ; program is specifically tasked with providing family planning services to low-income and uninsured individuals. That mission was recently adjusted by the Trump administration: In August the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services implemented a “domestic gag rule” that bans Title X funds from going to abortion clinics, including health centers that refer patients for abortion procedures.
This had a drastic effect on Planned Parenthood clinics all over the country, including Missouri. A report by the Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, found that Missouri’s Planned Parenthood clinics served 40 percent of the 56,540 individuals who received Title X-funded health care in 2015.
With the gag rule in play, Planned Parenthood left the Title X program in September — which had the effect of decreasing health care access nationwide and in some cases leading clinics to shut down entirely. Other states have pledged to replace the lost public funding for contraceptive care. Missouri is not one of those states.
That leaves private interests, like The Right Time in Missouri, to pick up the slack. Notably, the initiative is being administered by the Missouri Family Health Council, the same nonprofit that also oversees the annual distribution of $5 million in Title X grants to Missouri health centers.
However, The Right Time initiative “has been in the works for several years” and isn’t a reaction to the Trump gag rule, explains Michelle Trupiano, the health council’s executive director.
Still, Trupiano points out that the lack of contraceptive access predates Trump. It’s not a political issue, but a practical one for Missouri residents who are either uninsured or limited by employerprovided insurance that doesn’t cover enough of the price. And while conservative policymakers often blast birth control because of a religious opposition to casual or “risky” sex, she says that most people see contraception for what it is: The best way for individuals to choose the right time to have a family.
“In my experience, contraceptive access isn’t as controversial as people would think,” Trupiano says. “Yes, it can be politically fraught at times, but when we get down to real people living real lives, this has been well received. We’re hopeful that it’s making a difference.” n
AG’s Priest Abuse Probe Yields First Charges Written by DANNY WICENTOWSKI
He was “Priest 80,” but after a 0issouri prosecutor filed criminal charges alleging sexual assault, that unnamed priest was revealed this week to be Frederick Lutz. Until now, the retired priest living in Springfield had been identified only by a number in a report issued last year by the Missouri Attorney General — just one among 163 cases of reported priest abuse. On Thursday, Lutz, 76, pleaded not guilty in the Circuit Court of Stoddard County. He’s currently in custody on a $125,000 bond, charged with two counts of statutory sodomy, one count of sexual abuse and one count of forcible sodomy.
According to the probable cause statement, all four charges involve the same then-seventeenyear-old victim; he told investigators that the abuse occurred in 2000 while Lutz was a priest in a parish in southeast Missouri.
The fact that Lutz is even facing charges is notable, considering the fact that the allegations against him were known for years to &atholic oɚcials and recorded in the church’s personnel files.
Churches in Missouri have now opened those files to investigators. In August 2018, just three weeks after the release of an explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report that identified priests linked to more than 1,000 victims, St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson offered then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley “unfettered access” to the church’s records.
But unlike Pennsylvania, the ensuing investigation in Missouri would not involve a grand jury or subpoenas. At the time, the same sort of “invitation” made to Hawley was being repeated in more than a do]en states. &hurch oɚcials moved to get in front investigations that threatened to put bishops on witness stands and under oath in depositions. Instead, churches opened their books — and in Missouri, investigators under newly appointed Attorney Retired priest Frederick Lutz was arrested last week on charges of sexual abuse and sodomy. | COURTESY MISSOURI ATTORNEY GENERAL
General Eric Schmitt found yearsold allegations against Lutz.
In its September 2019 report, the Attorney General’s 2ɚce e[- plained that it was not naming the priests because they had not been criminally charged. But when it came to “Priest 80,” the investigators wrote that they found “multiple reports of sexual misconduct with minors occurring in the 1960s and 1970s.” In addition, there was a a victim who claimed that in 2000, as “a high school aged child,” the then 56-year-old priest had sexually abused him.
Out of the 163 abuse cases contained in church records, the case against “Priest 80” was only one of twelve cases which fell within Missouri’s statute of limitations. In January 2020, the Missouri Attorney General’s 2ɚce referred the case to the oɚce of the Stoddard County Prosecuting Attorney, which dispatched an investigator to interview the alleged victim about the 2000 incident.
In the probable cause statement released last week, the investigator wrote that the alleged abuse occurred between January and February of 2000, and that the victim had met Lutz while taking public school religion classes and doing yard work around the rectory in the St. Joseph Parish.
That day, Lutz allegedly called the victim to his room in his rectory; once there, the teen found the priest drinking alcohol and watching porn on a television. The victim declined a drink and tried to leave, but he told investigators the priest “blocked the door and would not let him out.” Then, he said, Lutz forced him to
perform and receive oral sex.
The victim, who is identified only by initials in the charging document, alleged that Lutz allowed him to leave the room only after he agreed to return the next day with marijuana. The victim was seventeen at the time.
It’s worth emphasizing that these details were already contained in the church’s personnel files when the 0issouri Attorney General began digging for abuse cases in 2018 — and those records for “Priest 80” included a second case of alleged abuse, dating to 1972. Echoing the later allegation, it involved a seventeen-year-old victim who claimed Lutz had gotten him drunk and abused him while he was incapacitated.
According to the court documents, the victim in the 1972 case formally reported the abuse to the Springfield&ape Girardeau Diocese, but not until 2006, when the statute of limitations for bringing criminal charges had already passed.
And yet, even with that information in hand, church oɚcials seemingly did nothing. Lutz served as a pastor in the St. Mary Parish in Lamar until his retirement in 2011. Then, in October 2018, two months after the Missouri Attorney General’s 2ɚce launched its clergy abuse investigation, the Springfield&ape Girardeau Diocese put out a press release announcing that Lutz had been accused of “sexual abuse of a minor.”
However, the press release noted only that “The allegation pertains to a period in the early 1970s.” The diocese’s press release appeared to omit the fact that the victim had lodged a formal complaint with the diocese in 2006, when Lutz was still performing active service as a pastor.
The press release also contained no mention of the 2000 incident, even though, according to the Stoddard County investigator, Lutz had directly approached the victim’s father and apologized for what he’d done.
Indeed, in comments this week to a Cape Girardeau CBS station, Stoddard County Prosecuting Attorney Russ Oliver said he was disappointed by the church’s reaction to the pending charges.
“They declined to have a sit down meeting with us about this,” Oliver told KFVS-TV (Channel 12) on Thursday. “I was really hopeful with the statements that the church has made in the past about being serious about priest abuse. In my experience that’s not what they followed through with this investigation.”
As for the Springfield&ape Girardeau Diocese, a spokeswoman released a statement on Wednesday, claiming “the Diocese had previously reported the allegations against Fr. Lutz in Stoddard County to the then-county prosecutor years ago when the allegations were initially made.”
That was news to the Stoddard County prosecutor. Reached by phone last week, Oliver told Riverfront Times that he’s yet to see any evidence of church oɚcials reporting Lutz’s actions to a previous prosecutor.
“I’ve heard the diocese say that,” Oliver said. “I’ve not seen anything in my oɚce that documents that actually happening.
2liver also noted that his oɚce is still seeking information on additional victims. Anyone with further details can contact the prosecutor’s oɚce at 558, extension 4. n
